Review: White Space by Ilsa J. Bick (TBR Challenge #2)

Originally I had received an egalley of this from Egmont USA Publishing and Edelweiss, but was unable to finish reading it.  I left a short review of how far I got HERE.  I got an ARC of it, I believe through trading on YA Book Exchange, and I picked it back up just recently so I could be prepared to read the egalley of the sequel, The Dickens Mirror.  And now that Egmont will be closing their USA publishing, I am also participating in a tour to promote the authors that are being left off, one of them being this sequel.

At first it took me a bit to get back into it. What I remembered was a bunch of teens who had been stuck in a blizzard.  But then it wasn't just a blizzard, a strange fog showed up, and really crazy monsters, as I said in my original semi-review, Lovecraftian monsters.  And it seems all of it kind of stems back to a certain author, and how he used something called the Dickens Mirror in order to create his characters, but it also pulled through these monsters that are now coming through.  It turns out that all of the characters may just be written in books.  Even one, Emma, who it seems has been writing books herself.  There are all kinds of dimensions, and twists and turns, and there are some really major science terms and theories talked about, including Schrodinger's Cat, and another one I had to look up, and even after looking up I'm still not sure I understand it completely.  But then physics has always been my least favorite science area, I prefer Biology and Geology.  But I did really like the science stuff thrown in.

It's really hard to explain this book.  I feel like you have to read it for yourself.  It's definitely not anything that would ever be termed an "easy" read.  It is a good one, like I said, the monsters are very scary and the scenes are very exciting and action packed at times.  Definitely could make a very intellectual horror movie from it.  I did get back into it when I was about 100 pages after where I left off, and by the end I was really liking all the twists and turns.  Until the very end.  Once again I was kind of confused, although I understand there was an "infection" that was supposedly causing the changes that confused me, I still am not quite sure if what I finally thought I'd figured out is true or not.  So I'll be eager to pick up the sequel in a week or so, I'll be posting a review of it as part of the blog tour on Monday, March 2nd.

Not sure if this is a very good review.  Like I said, I'm really unsure how to explain it.  It's characters from different stories brought together to try to help the author's daughter get rid of the bad things/fog that is starting to leak into the real world, maybe.  Lots of good characters, with back stories that are almost all really well developed, and you learn eve more about them at the end.

If you like the author, you will probably want to give it a try, just be prepared to have to actually take the time to read and think as you read, so that you don't get too confused. 

Review (sort of): White Space (Dark Passages #1) by Ilsa J. Bick

First, thanks to Edelweiss and Egmont USA Publishing for allowing me to read an e-galley of this.  Second, the reason I am calling this "sort of" a review is because I haven't actually finished the book yet.  I've only made it a little over halfway through the 560 pages.  The problem is I was having so much trouble reading the format of the e-galley that I decided to just review how I liked the book so far, and wait to finish it with an actual copy of the book when I could really get into it.  The print in the e-galley was so small, and the only way to make it bigger was to use my hand and kind of swipe it bigger.  But then when I went to turn the page, it went back to the small size again, and I would have to re-enlarge it.  And, if I didn't make it smaller before I turned the page, then it took a long time to go to the next page as well as being smaller.  So I kept being interrupted every time I tried to go on to the next page, and there were some really intense moments that I didn't want to be interrupted as I needed to know what was happening next, and quickly!

I would compare this story to what I imagine H.P. Lovecraft stories are like.  I've not read any, I don't think, but it seems like the monsters remind me of the images you see of "Lovecraftian" monsters.  And it definitely reminds me of a Stephen King novel, one of his really dark ones, like It, one of my favorites.  I do really prefer to kind of know sometimes ahead of times what is going on, and in a way, you're kind of finding your way along the story with the characters, but it is done in a really good way.  It is a totally different kind of story than the author's first series, The Ashes Trilogy, but I loved that, and so far I'm pretty intrigued by this story as well.

The characters are all flawed it seems, they have something to hide, something about them that could change the way the people they are meeting would feel about being around them.  And while we kind of know with some of them, you slowly learn more as the story goes on. There are two characters, soldiers, that I kind of figured out a little of their back story before it really began to unfold, but I'm not saying that in a bad way, I was just thinking it was what it was going to be, and then it was!

I definitely recommend this book, but as it is over 500 pages, same as the first trilogy, you have to be ready to pick it up and just get sucked in, and just go with it.  I can't wait till it comes out, probably enough that I will have to go ahead and buy it right away so that I can finish reading it.  But we'll see how broke I am this week.