Author: Darren Shan
Series: THe Saga of Darren Shan (book 12)
Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books
Release Date: 21 Mar 2011
ISBN13: 9780007159215
Synopsis
Time seemed to collapse.... There was a sharp stabbing sensation in my stomach.... Steve crowed, "Now I have you! Now you're gonna die!"
Dead if he loses -- damned if he wins. The time has finally come for Darren to face his archenemy, Steve Leopard. One of them will die. The other will become the Lord of the Shadows -- and destroy the world.
Is the future written, or can Darren trick destiny?
This is Darren's story.
My Review
So this is the 12th and final part in the Darren Shan Saga. In some ways it seems like it has passed in a blur in others it feels longer.
I've loved this series so much and I was expecting a truly amazing ending to it and there certainly are some spectacular moments, but overall i have been left feeling quite conflicted. I enjoyed the overall story but some things just didn't work for me and left me frustrated.
I actually really liked this book up to about page 120 out of 195, so well over half. It's exciting, continues to follow the characters we know and love and really builds and builds towards the exciting conclusion.
And then things just get confusing and to me a bit silly. I tried to go with it, and I can see what the author was trying to do and why he did it, but I didn't like it.
Without giving loads of spoilers I can't really discuss this as I would like, but I'll try to summarise some of my thoughts, but they might not make sense if you haven't read it yet.
This books dabbles in the ideas of time travel and paradox's and if you have followed my blog for a while you will know that I struggle with this sort of thing, it has to be done very sensibly and thoroughly for me to accept it, there can't be any 'how' or 'why' questions confusing things and I'm afraid that this one had me questioning. In just 60 pages I was questioning the whole series. If certain things didn't happen, then how could the rest of the story happen, and if he stopped that, how could everything play out, but if it didn't happen then that person wouldn't be there to do that so then it would happen, but if it then did happen, that person couldn't stop it in the first place. OH MY GOSH my head hurts!!!
Maybe I'm just used to more fairytale style endings - where everything wraps up and makes sense, and I know life isn't like that and there will always be things we don't understand but this was just a bit too much for me.
An awful lot of things weren't cleared up and I don't know what came of half the characters or if they were even relevant anymore.
I don't hate the book though, it really frustrated me and made me wonder what the point of it all was if certain things happened, but I did enjoy the series and as I said before, I can see why Shan ended it that way.
I will always remember this as an awesome series, but I'm sort of re-writing the ending in my head to satisfy my curiosities and annoyances.
If you have come this far in the series then you have to finish it, it is worth reading and you'll be glad you did. And looking online, this ending seems to be like Marmite - you either love it or hate it.
My Rating
No comments:
Post a Comment