TheDaisyDeer's Best Books of 2016

2016 has been an interesting year for me in reading. When I look back on the year it's a bit disappointing that there aren't any stand-out books for me (if you've been around for a while you might notice that I don't have a 'best overall novel' this year).

But at the same time when I go back to my blog or GoodReads and see everything together, it appears that actually that I've had a very good reading year: I read more books this year than last, I read a wider variety and began looking at things like poetry and graphic novels, I had my first full year working with NetGalley and became a reviewer for Unbound Publishers as well.

And there have definitely been stories I have fallen in love with too. Quite uncharacteristically of me, I've shed a few emotional tears over books in 2016, and I've nearly thrown my kindle across the room in frustration at how stupid some novels are.

Overall, though there might not be one particular book that I instantly remember as being the best thing I read in 2016, there are a whole host of novels that I loved and are more than worthy to be gracing bookshelves everywhere. Here are the best books that I read (but were not necessarily released) in 2016:

Novel with the Best Story read in 2016:

Empire of Storms

Sarah J. Maas

Read my review of Empire of Storms here!

Novel with the Best Writing read in 2016:

A Monster Calls

Patrick Ness

Read my review of A Monster Calls here!

Novel with the Best Entertainment read in 2016:

This Savage Song

V.E. Schwab

Read my review of This Savage Song here!

Best New Discovery read in 2016:

The Penelopiad

Margaret Atwood

Read my review of The Penelopiad here!

Best Fantasy Novel read in 2016:

A Gathering of Shadows

V.E. Schwab

Read my review of A Gathering of Shadows here!

Best Sci-Fi Novel read in 2016:

Sleeping Giants

Sylvain Neuvel

Read my review of Sleeping Giants here!

Best Dystopian Novel read in 2016:

Wolf by Wolf

Ryan Graudin

Read my review of Wolf by Wolf here!

Best Historical Novel read in 2016:

Salt to the Sea

Ruta Sepetys

Read my review of Salt to the Sea here!

Best Contemporary Novel read in 2016:

The Dreamers

Gilbert Adair

Read my review of The Dreamers here!

Best Romantic Novel read in 2016:

The Winner's Kiss

Marie Rutkoski

Read my review of The Winner's Kiss here!

Best Classic Novel read in 2016:

The Burial at Thebes (Antigone)

Sophocles, translated by Seamus Heaney

Read my summary of The Burial at Thebes here!

Best Mystery/Thriller Novel read in 2016:

Crooked Kingdom

Leigh Bardugo

Read my review of Crooked Kingdom here!

Best Graphic Novel read in 2016:

Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi

Read my summary of Persepolis here!

Best Poetry Collection read in 2016:

Give Me a God I Can Relate To

Blythe Baird

Read my summary of Give Me a God I Can Relate To here!

Best Play read in 2016:

Peter and Alice

John Logan

Read my summary of Peter and Alice here!

Best Review Copy [not otherwise mentioned] read in 2016:

Falling Awake
provided by NetGalley & Vintage

Alice Oswald

Read my summary of Falling Awake here!

Image Sources:
Empire of Storms - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29559052-empire-of-storms
A Monster Calls - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17262384-a-monster-calls
This Savage Song - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28696452-this-savage-song
The Penelopiad - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/561371.The_Penelopiad
A Gathering of Shadows - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26236443-a-gathering-of-shadows
Sleeping Giants - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28587880-sleeping-giants
Wolf by Wolf- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27433569-wolf-by-wolf
Salt to the Sea - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28930418-salt-to-the-sea
The Dreamers - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/624641.The_Dreamers
The Winner's Kiss - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28587801-the-winner-s-kiss
The Burial at Thebes - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/839731.The_Burial_at_Thebes
Crooked Kingdom - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28933383-crooked-kingdom
Persepolis - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3106983-persepolis
Give Me a God I Can Relate To - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27803255-give-me-a-god-i-can-relate-to
Peter and Alice - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17347724-peter-and-alice
Falling Awake - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30840109-falling-awake

Crystal Storm

Book Title: Crystal Storm

Author: Morgan Rhodes
Series: Falling Kingdoms #5

Date Started: December 26th 2016

Date Completed: December 15th 2016

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Adventure
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

As the fifth instalment of the Falling Kingdoms series, things are started to pull together. The characters are gravitating towards each other and everyone's endgames are starting to be revealed. But while Crystal Storm jumped the story forward, for me it stumbled back in terms of character development and relationships.

This book was quite predictable, but then again I've never read the Falling Kingdoms series for its plotline, I've always been much more interested in its characters. But it'd be nice to have a few little twists here and there like the previous books. In fact a lot of what didn't work for me in Crystal Storm is to do with the standards the series has set itself so far, so I can't be too harsh; Gathering Shadows and Frozen Tides especially were always going to be a tough act to follow. But where the rest of the series has felt well done with a few little errors slipping through, Crystal Storm felt like there was a huge rush to get the book done so a lot of things were left to slide in. There's an awful lot of telling instead of showing in this book, and when there's so many characters we know so well to interact with one another this really shouldn't be the case, especially when Rhodes has be able to imply things without directly telling us before.

Another little thing I want to mention was the way that abuse was dealt with. On the surface, there's a great, strong picture given about how wrong it is. But saying 'I'd never let anyone raise a hand to me, I'm too strong' and leaving it at that doesn't give a good representation of how other people's actions supposedly dictate your strength or weakness. How other people act say things about them, not you. I'm very sure this wasn't the message that was intended, but it troubles me that it only half dealt with the issue. I find this a bit in the feminist side of the story as well: everyone's very quick to say that the women are as strong as men, but are also very quick to insult men for being men, and are then happy submit to masculinity. As a whole, these aren't huge, glaring problems because it the vast scheme of things it works in the story and supports the characters and their values, but it's still a little detail that I think gets out of hand in a lot of fiction quickly if its not addressed.

What frustrated me the most about this book was that there's so many stupid pieces of dialogue, or silly predictable plot twists, or even tiny little actions that are so cliched and out of place just for the sake of having a 'funny' response or a forced interaction between characters. Don't get me wrong, these little things definitely happened in the previous books but they weren't every other page. In Crystal Storm it felt like Rhodes was doing whatever felt the most dramatic regardless of the continuity she'd painstakingly built up over the series. She sacrifices her own story for sounds cool and I just think it's a shame. In this book especially, the instances of this became much bigger plot holes and empty logic just to get into tense situations or play with our heart strings. But unfortunately it brought me so out of the story I wasn't getting that emotional response anymore.

While everyone's paths have crossed, and we're building up to the ending from here on out, Crystal Storm honestly felt... stagnant. Though the story did progress, we didn't actually move that far over the whole book - you can count the locations on one hand - and events didn't have the weight to it like in the previous books. In all fairness, some things had to be cleared up before we get into the final chapters of the series, but perhaps it was a bad, bad idea to bring everyone together so soon then. When I saw everyone ending up in the same place, I immediately thought that this is it, things are really going to speed up now. Instead, I'm still waiting for that final catalyst to go off as everything goes to hell.

I've mentioned that I felt Crystal Storm took a stumble backwards in terms of characters for this book; the most obvious example of this being that I don't think the characters were really themselves. I sympathise with Rhodes at having to write so many characters that we've grown to know so well in the same place at the same time (again, was that sensible?), but in favour or creating some honestly unnecessary dramatic tension we have characters acting like people they're not. And the consequence of this was that they're losing their lovability; I'm finding it harder and harder to look at them as real people. In fact, in the few days it's taken me to get to writing this review I completely forgot that we lost some people in this book. That's not a good sign.

This series follows multiple narratives, but it's a lie to say that it's not the Cleo and Magnus show. Unusually, this is something that's developed as the readers have made clear their preferences and it's really nice to see that Rhodes is giving us more of them as a result. I, personally, love both Cleo and Magnus - on their own and together. However, some of their relationship dramas in this book were just for the hell of it, let's be honest. (Slight spoilers: there's no reason to 'curse' Cleo past the sexual tension; there's no logic behind them keeping their relationship a secret; there's no point in suggesting a love triangle with Jonas other than to have the angsty arguments). I have no problems with romance being included - hell, Cleo and Magnus is a couple that I definitely indulge in - but because I like them as characters so much I want it to feel genuine, not cliche tension to tease your readers.

Crystal Storm was a genuinely enjoyable read but it's not the standard I expect from Rhodes these days. A long series where hype grows is a hard thing to keep up and I commend her for where the books are going, but this particular instalment was a bit of a let down when so much of it was powered with cliches that we know Rhodes has the ability to avoid.

Image Source - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29589436-crystal-storm

White as Snow

Book Title: White as Snow

Author: Tanith Lee

Date Started: November 26th 2016

Date Completed: December 12th 2016

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Historical
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

Hearing that White as Snow was inspired by a blend of fairytale and Greek mythology was enough for me to pick it up and these elements were definitely the highlights for me, but unfortunately the rest didn’t hold up. I don’t want to say the book doesn’t have other merits - it definitely does - but things were so slow it was hard to keep my enthusiasm up.

Finally, I have found a retelling of a fairytale that actually keeps the magic of the original. I have nothing against modern or other unexpected twists in retellings, but reading stories I’m very passionate about get ruined because the writer doesn’t understand the atmosphere and point of fairytales is not something I particularly enjoy. You can tell that Lee understands fairytales, and definitely favours the darker originals in her work. I’ve been looking for something exactly like this for a very long time, it’s just such a shame the pacing wasn’t up to scratch to keep me involved; from the writing-side of it, I loved it. But I couldn’t keep myself engaged with the story and characters.

Likewise, extensive world building is something I really respect and value, especially when it’s elaborating and developing a pre-existing idea, but White as Snow gets very slow very quickly. The main storyline doesn’t even start until halfway through the book because there’s so much time given to setting up characters. Some of this works, the rest is just unnecessary and frankly boring.

If you ever needed a book detailing the cruelty to women in medieval times then this is more than enough. While I’m glad it included some things, at times it was quite sickening to actually read. It’s important that we show sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse etc, but I struggled to keep coming back to the book when I knew there was going to be more and not a lot of redemption in response.

For arguably such a small novel, there are an awful lot of elements and little storylines introduced throughout that are then left behind not long after. The story spans such a huge time period that it’s understandable that elements are no longer relevant to the characters, but for a reader it became harder to latch onto a story that left behind stories you wanted to explore and placed them with new and unfamiliar ones. I personally really liked the wood folk, for example, and would’ve liked to see them carried on for a little longer, but they fade out at the halfway point and are never really mentioned again. A lot of the reason I found it hard to enjoy this book was due to the almost disjointed nature of the plot line.

With all good retellings, White as Snow has a twist on the original; we don’t only follow Coira (‘snow white’), but also her mother Arpazia (or the ‘wicked queen’). Needless to say, Arpazia has more than enough exposition to explain her well-known evilness and I honestly enjoyed her story more than Coira’s. But - and there’s a big but - sharing the protagonist space between both Arpazia and Coira made it very hard for me to find a place to read from: I feel like we were jumping between the women but not really exploring either of them that well. Pacing got complicated later in the book when both their stories were going on and felt like it dragged even more as a consequence. Additionally, both Arpazia and Coira are distant, detached characters - understandably - but it makes it hard to latch onto their narratives when it doesn’t feel like they’re really in them either.

I loved the sound of White as Snow, and I did like what I read but every time I put it down I found it hard to think of reasons to pick it back up. The story, while vivid and mystical, was slow the point of dragging, and the characters so far removed due to their circumstances that they were hard to engage with. The more I read, the lower the rating went in my head and while I loved this book to begin with, sadly it wasn’t the most enjoyable thing for the all 300 pages.

Image Source - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/362592.White_as_Snow

Every Mountain Made Low

Book Title: Every Mountain Made Low

Author: Alex White

Date Started: November 11th 2016

Date Completed: November 25th 2016

Genres: Fantasy, Dystopian, Thriller
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

Every Mountain Made Low was, for the most part, very enjoyable. It's only really just occurring to me how strange that title is; there's no clear link to the story, and the general atmosphere it suggests doesn't suit this book. Nonetheless, White had an engaging premise, a great protagonist and executed his story very well in places - but overall, I can't help feeling that this novel didn't reach its full potential, both in storyline and style. Towards the end, I got the feeling that a word count was trying to be met, rather than the tide of the story naturally taking White along to the end.

White's writing style was generally unremarkable, but concise enough to leave the reader open to engage with the storyline. I often struggle to find something to talk about when there's nothing blatant to praise or criticise in the style of prose, but actually the fact that I was able to fall so easily into the story White was trying to tell is a huge strength of the book in itself.

Every Mountain Made Low has a pretty standard crime-based storyline, but with an added twist of ghosts. When I first read the description of this book on NetGalley, that was certainly something that stuck out to me. In the end, it ended up being less of a key concept and more of a little flavour to the action scenes - when I mentioned that this book didn't reach its full potential, this was definitely one of the things that could've been utilised better. The whole flow of White's ideas could've improved from a little more work, but there was a solid enough world holding things together that it was still enjoyable.

When I began this book my immediate thought was 'five stars, I love it.' From there on certain things happened that I wasn't so happy with, and then a really good part came up again and I was continually switching between five and four stars (and sometimes three, I'll be honest). I was still pretty undecided three-quarters in as to how to rate this book, but then the downward spiral started to come undone. The biggest weakness of this book is that it loses its steam towards the ends: where the beginning had been overall quite slow in worldbuilding, character development and events, the end suddenly had so much condensed into a much smaller space. Normally this wouldn't have torn down a book so much for me, but the momentum of the initial engagement had just run out by that time. Suddenly characters felt very inconsistent past Loxley and there were huge jumps in relationship dynamics in favour of getting to the end of the plot. The conclusion definitely dragged on longer than we needed for how quickly things felt like they were wrapped up. I felt like I'd missed two or three chapters right in the middle of the book where everything should've been properly transitioned into the approach of the climax. Instead, we go from the 'everyday' - however horrible and strange that is for Loxley - into the concluding sequences, when really we needed just a little bit more establishing of where we were headed.

If we're talking about the characters in this book, Loxley is really all the focus you have. Don't get me wrong, there's a whole host of various different people, but no one is really given that much attention in terms of development as our protagonist is. Understandably, I'll admit, because Loxley is a brilliant portrayal of a strong character with a learning disability - something I've come across maybe twice before in my many years of reading. As someone who doesn't know that much about learning disabilities (and so doesn't want to assume Loxley has autism as opposed to another learning disability), the narration did a really good job of showing how Loxley reacts to things is perfectly understandable from her perspective, but points out where other people just don't understand her. Manipulation and general ignorance towards her disability were also shown pretty well, I think, and White intertwined it all quite naturally within the primarily crime-based storyline.

A sort of dystopian meets crime thriller ghost story, Every Mountain Made Low is a very interesting addition to bookshelves. I haven't seen such unflinching diversity for a while, and it was so nice to read about characters who aren't in the mainstream but don't even really ponder on the fact that they aren't. Though things drifted off towards the end for me, I enjoyed reading it for the most part and think the adult crime genre will welcome it happily.

Image Source - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29430524-every-mountain-made-low

Versailles

Book Title: Versailles

Author: Yannick Hill

Date Started: October 29th 2016

Date Completed: November 9th 2016

Genres: Sci-Fi, Adventure
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to Unbound Publishers for this copy for review ◆

Versailles was an interesting idea and something I hadn't seen before in the Young Adult genre but it wasn't pulled off as well I would have liked. There were a lot of things I liked about this book, but they were far and few in between and as a whole piece, it couldn't hold my attention. I got about half way through, but unfortunately I just had to make the decision to leave it there because I wasn't giving it much attention anymore because it just left me unengaged.

When I started this book I was pleasantly surprised by how different it felt. The first thing that I noticed was how like a script it read - and in a good way. I can see how some people might find it a bit disjointing, but for a film geek like me, it was strangely refreshing. Not least in the way that it hid some of the very direct storytelling the Hill uses; I hate it when authors tell the reader things in a situation or about a character instead of showing them through the action, but it wasn't so frustrating in this style. Unfortunately, it isn't really enough to hold up a story that doesn't feel like it's progressing even at the halfway point.

The story about the family inside the digital fortress of Versailles was miles ahead of the exploration of technology's influence on our culture. This isn't even that much of an insight into what constant, inescapable media could do to a family in a fictional world, it's about this particular family. Perhaps if the message around technology wasn't so confused it might be different, but what I read in the first half of the novel showed the evilness of humans to be a far greater threat than the technology they used to stay in power. Honestly, as far as I could tell the technology wasn't that damaging at all (it's even a very clear and effective escape for River's problematic situation), but it's in fact the father who's ruining these people's lives - a father who is painted as a one-sided psychopath, I might add.

Which moves me onto my other issue that made it had for me to stay engaged and immersed in the story: I didn't know what I was supposed to take seriously. There's a lot of abstract imagery in Versailles, and that caught my attention at first, but then there's some things that I don't know if they're actually there in this futuristic technological dystopia, or if they're a metaphor. When you combine that with some honestly ridiculous attempts to create teenage memes or whatever you want to call it, you cross a line between what can be understood in the suspension-of-belief that fiction creates, and what's just silly. I don't know what parts of Versailles were supposed to be taken seriously and what was intended to be satirical, and I think that comes from putting some character into prose.

I think the biggest problem for me was that the characters were just dislikeable. Now, I appreciate they're all supposed to be brainwashed at the start (presumably it develops a little more in the second half of the book, but I didn't see huge leaps in the first portion), but it's exaggerated to the point where I didn't like them, and I wasn't rooting for them or anything they did. And the problem was then that you're supposed to connect to these people being smothered in this futuristic digital palace, but I didn't because they felt so alien and emotionless to the point where it wasn't enjoyable to read about them. Even Missy, who arguably leads the story through her rebellious act of running away from both her home and all social media, doesn't feel like she actually believes in what she's doing. They're characters going through the motions of a narrative without the heart to come to life.

For an exploration into the influence of technology for a Young Adult audience, Versailles is an interesting new addition to what's available. Personally, it couldn't decide on what it was enough to be able to get me on board, but there are definitely some aspects which I was pleasantly surprised to read about. It's not quite contemporary but features family dynamics, not quite sci-fi but is definitely very futuristic, not quite adventure but has road-trip aspects to it - the list goes on. I can't say I've seen anything exactly like it on the market so if it sounds intriguing maybe it'll be that something new for you.

Image Source - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27993245-versailles

The Lie Tree

Book Title: The Lie Tree

Author: Frances Hardinge

Date Started: October 17th 2016

Date Completed: October 29th 2016

Genres: Mystery, Historical, Fantasy
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Four stars

Review:

Hardinge's tale of secrets, scandal and social status on a secluded little island has the ring of 'award-worthiness' all around it, and I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a lot that this wasn't a book that was all bark and no bite. In fact, The Lie Tree had a lot of bite when it came to blending the survival of politics in the early 1800s (particularly for women) and the more fantastical idea of a tree that tells its owner hidden truths. I appreciated the pains that were taken in the first half of the book to achieve a sense of realism that could be understood without overly detailed or dull world building of an unforgiving culture. It was just disappointing for me when Hardinge started making the facts looser and looser to create a sort of climax that was in the end a bit hard to believe.

The element of feminism in this book was completely unexpected but very good. I didn't know a lot about the book going in; I'd heard good things, but I had just thought it would be an interesting story - not an engaging mystery with commentary on the social structure weaved throughout. The representation of women to start with was really nice because we had such a huge range of characters, some very clearly opposing or agreeing with social ideals, and others not quite sure who they were - but again we started to lose the consistency at the midway point. I felt like, in terms of writing and story, Hardinge had put a lot of effort into the initial construction of her world and characters, but then wanted to have fun and so let more and more things slip out of actuality and into entertaining fiction. And don't get me wrong, the entertainment was still there, but it felt out of place compared to the beginning of the book.

I loved the little flashes of all these different genres and subjects we get in this book: archaeology, science, magical realism, thrillers, botany, palaeontology, photography etc. You can tell how much thorough research Hardinge put in, but there's a genuine feel of passion and interest there too. Personally, I've always been fascinated with fossils and ruined artefacts so the book was already scoring points with me, but even areas like botany and science that I know nothing about became quite interesting through the mouths of the characters. Faith as a heroine aided this, as I'll get onto, but just in general Hardinge made what sounded like a dull piece of the landscape of the story into an element that fascinated the protagonist and the reader alike.

Sadly though, as with all mysteries, the revelation of the 'criminal' makes or breaks the story and The Lie Tree was a bit lack-luster for me. I've mentioned several times already that the halfway point of this book peaked in terms of believable realism and took a downward spiral from there. In terms of entertainment and sheer pride, it ticked all the boxes and I loved reading it, but when it came to actually wrapping up what had been a book so concerned with subtly but succinctly getting across its point it just fell down a few pegs.

The Lie Tree has a whole host of characters and Hardinge does very well to balance them all in her narrative with a distinction between each of them, but of course the stand-out character has to be our daring protagonist, Faith. From the start, she's an interesting person, but we see her develop a great deal in a short amount of time - and not in the direction you might expect. I jumped between feeling like I was in Faith's position and feeling voyeuristic a lot in the story, which surprisingly didn't pull me out of the book too much but was a little confusing when it came to how I was supposed to feel about everything that was happening. On the one hand, I really empathised with the horrible ways Faith was being treated, but I also completely understood why people were reacting in the way they were. I'm sure Hardinge probably designed it this way and was a big part of why the book won the Costa book award in 2015. She very cleverly puts you in a place where you aren't quite sure how to react to very strong situations, just like Faith isn't sure how a woman is supposed to do the things she needs to do without breaking her social status.

In all honesty, I bought The Lie Tree because I saw the special Chris Riddell illustrated edition and couldn't say no - I wasn't overly interested beforehand, regardless of the hype. There's only really six or seven full-page drawings but they helped immerse me in the world, and I'm glad that I picked up a book I would otherwise have let pass by because it was worth it. Though I assume the primary audience for the book is maybe 12-16, I think both younger and older readers can enjoy this book, and get a lot from it - if you ever need a history lesson in what life was like for women in the 1800s, here's the perfect way to teach your kids without them knowing you're doing it.

Image Source - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30201080-the-lie-tree

The Fever Code

Book Title: The Fever Code

Author: James Dashner
Series: The Maze Runner #0.6

Date Started: October 7th 2016

Date Completed: October 17th 2016

Genres: Dystopian, Mystery
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

I really wanted to enjoy this book, I promise I did. I was ready for some character backstories from the Gladers - especially Newt and his sister, and Minho who we know basically nothing about at all - I was hoping for some proper, sound explanations from WICKED, and maybe a few exciting action scenes in between. I would've taken whatever storyline as long as we had those characters we love back. But I don't feel like we did have them, so in the end I just couldn't enjoy it.

One of the first things I noticed when reading The Fever Code was just how far Dashner has come in his writing style. I always said that his prose really wasn't great in the original trilogy, and it has always been a bit of a struggle for me to get through his juddering style. But, seemingly out of nowhere, this book has a really good flow in its writing. It's not perfect (Dashner really needs to work on distinguishing his character's dialogues past catchphrases and between age groups; when the five year old kids at the start speak the same at the adults do ten years later there's a problem), but overall I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I could actually get lost in the world while I was reading without being pulled out by having to reread a sentence several times to understand it.

This book, in short, is a patchy collection of scenes that Dashner has clearly had in his head since he wrote the first book. These specific scenes are all developed and interesting because he's had a couple of years to turn them over in his head, but when they're combined with lots of scenes that feel like they've been made up on the spot in order to fill in the gaps things start to fall apart and lose their pace a little bit. When some of the scenes that Dashner clearly had a sentimental attachment to (and so wanted to include) are set when the characters are about five just as they're abducted, we then have this enormous gap of about ten years to when most of the actual action of this book happens (predictably, when the first lot of people have been sent into the Glade). What needed to happen was for Dashner's editor (as the unbiased overlooker) to step back and say 'I'm sorry, I see this is important to you, but it's weakening the story' and either not include it or incorporate it in in a flashback or narration or something. Instead we get this huge portion of the book which is trying to compensate for the huge gap between events by being filled with pointless and at times boring scenes that don't transition the time well or even develop characters or plot. We honestly didn't need the first three quarters of this book in terms of making the main story points - and it's not like James had to set the scene and introduce the characters, we're all well aware of who these people are. If we're here, we want new information, but we don't really get it.

So when I had those thoughts going around my head for the majority of this book, and then suddenly that last quarter comes up I really wandered why we needed most of this book that is really a huge introduction to the climax. (All I can think is that there isn't enough in just the ending to write a whole book.) The conclusion to the book itself was a little lack lustre for me, but I do admit that I was already a little too disappointed to be able to take anything in properly anymore. And we all knew how this book was going to end of course, but the 'shock' factor right at the end didn't really surprise or impact me a lot - but even then, the pacing in that last little section was really good! And the emotions started to feel actually real and I caught a glimmer of that original playfulness that makes this trilogy so fun. I wish the whole book had been like that ending quarter, and I wish Dashner had sacrificed those few scenes right at the beginning to focus properly on the later development.

We were promised to be reunited with old characters. Oh, I was so excited, I was so ready to hear these tragic backstories. And we got them a bit - and if you're a fan of Thomas you get it a lot. The Fever Code is very much the Thomas and Teresa show again (understandably, everything does happen because of them), but I missed the side characters and, for most of them, they're barely in more than a couple of pages and mentions. Honestly, this was the biggest thing that got in the way of my enjoyment of this book, and I hold my hands up and say yes, I did let the fact it didn't live up to expectations sway me. But I don't think anyone can go into this book without expectations: it's the prequel to a series that gets you attached to certain characters, of course you want to be able to explore them more in a story that supposedly follows their backstory.

On a personal note, Newt is entirely wasted on this book. I have a personal attachment to him, but he's a well known fan favourite, and it's clear Dashner knew this because he very aptly positioned the token reunion scene between Newt and his sister - but that's pretty much your lot for that relationship. Overall, a lot of the side characters past Teresa, Chuck, and maybe Ava Paige, become little name drops or cameos scattered throughout the story. Some of them aren't necessary to the plot and are just there so you can say 'oh look, here's this person', and the rest don't spend nearly enough time actually exploring those side characters again.

In all fairness, The Fever Code had a tough wrap from the beginning: we all had our hopes for what sort of backstories we were going to explore, and I have to say the films definitely haven't helped in terms of reminding people of what actually happens in the canon. There were some parts that really confused me until I remembered some of the weirder little events in the book (that still don't really make sense). In its own right, this book isn't that bad but it's not what we've been sold, and it didn't focus on the aspects of the prequel I was invested in.

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