Wow, between eight and ten, seriously?! I never imagined Conn or Rowan as that young by any means. I'd put Rowan at 16 and Conn at an undernourished 13 or 14. Certainly the spark of almost-romance between them and Argent's jealousy in the second book seems to suggest we're dealing with young teens rather than children.
My eight-year-old son ADORES these books. He can't wait for the next one. I think they're admirably suited to the age group for which they're intended (and particularly good for young boys, who tend to be impatient with too much emphasis on character development and worldbuilding when they'd rather get straight to the plot), but I can understand why it might seem unsatisfying to some readers to have much of the world and magic system still unexplored.
I didn't mind that, though, because I really did like Conn (and the Conn-Nevery-Benet dynamic, as well as the eventual romantic potential of Conn/Rowan) very much. I thought it was interesting to see a first-person narrator who is almost completely withheld from the reader on an emotional level, and it struck me as a deliberate choice to have Conn not talk about his feelings, rather than a careless one.
None of which is meant to negate your perfectly reasonable and honest review! It's just that your comments got me thinking about my own reaction to reading MT 1 and 2, and how interesting and diverse reader expectations of and responses to (and, in the case of the characters' age, interpretations of) a book can be.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-08-31 05:20 pm (UTC)My eight-year-old son ADORES these books. He can't wait for the next one. I think they're admirably suited to the age group for which they're intended (and particularly good for young boys, who tend to be impatient with too much emphasis on character development and worldbuilding when they'd rather get straight to the plot), but I can understand why it might seem unsatisfying to some readers to have much of the world and magic system still unexplored.
I didn't mind that, though, because I really did like Conn (and the Conn-Nevery-Benet dynamic, as well as the eventual romantic potential of Conn/Rowan) very much. I thought it was interesting to see a first-person narrator who is almost completely withheld from the reader on an emotional level, and it struck me as a deliberate choice to have Conn not talk about his feelings, rather than a careless one.
None of which is meant to negate your perfectly reasonable and honest review! It's just that your comments got me thinking about my own reaction to reading MT 1 and 2, and how interesting and diverse reader expectations of and responses to (and, in the case of the characters' age, interpretations of) a book can be.