By Carolyn Hennesy [LibraryThing – Amazon]
Pandora and her friends have collected Jealousy and Vanity, but now they must travel to the Atlas Mountains to collect Laziness. To make matters worse, Pandora is quickly separated from her friends, all of the heroes are quickly enslaved, and Hera has kidnapped Pandy’s beloved dog. Alone for real now, Pandora must use her wits to free herself and find Laziness, but that’s no easy task when the sky is, quite literally falling.
The Pandora series is shaping up to be like the Sisters Grimm books, in that I start out charmed by the concept, with only minor quibbles, and find those quibbles growing with every book until I’m just deeply irritated by the whole thing. (Please, Sisters Grimm fans, hold your angry comments.)
There’s not much to say about the details of this one. I did like that Pandora found herself taking care of two little boys on her adventure; she stepped very naturally and likeably into the role of protector, and the boys were cute without being cloying.
But that’s about all I liked. The prose is seriously weak. I don’t know if it’s gotten worse or if my tolerance for it has gotten lower, but there’s way too much telling-not-showing, point-of-view switching, characters knowing things they couldn’t possibly know because Hennesy can’t keep track of whose point of view she’s writing, poor transitions, and awkward descriptions. The cutesy way the characters talk is incredibly grating: peppering teenage girls’ conversation with “Duh!” just makes it sound like you’re talking down to the audience, Alcie’s “cursing” by yelling out fruit names is annoying, I don’t know why Homer’s a Valley Boy, and smart people do not sound like they’re reciting a thesaurus from memory. I am looking at you, Iole. No one says “You’re being obdurate and obfuscatory,” no matter how smart they are.
Furthermore, there seems to be no point in separating Pandora from her friends, ostensibly making her mission harder, if you’re going to have Dionysius, Apollo, Hephaestus, Hermes, and, oh yeah, her immortal Titan father show up and help her (not to mention the indirect assistance of Athena, Ares, and Zeus). That is cheating. I want to read a book about a girl accomplishing great things, not a girl letting the gods help her to accomplish great things.
There is potential in these books. I will say again that the idea of reclaiming the Originally Sinning woman as a protagonist is a great idea and I’m glad someone is writing it. But the execution is sadly lacking. Two cupcakes, and I’m done with this series.
Tags: Carolyn Hennesy
First of all, this is a young adults series not particularly meant for anyone older than 15. Alcie’s “annoying” replacement of fruit instead of cuss words is purposely (obviously) like that because of the young readers. And I’m sure Hennesy’s point of the God’s and her father helping her is to show how much they like her and want her to succeed and yes it’s cheating but they don’t like Hera in the series as much as the next person. And since they did get seperated in the middle of their journey Hennesy had to make the point of views switch awkwardly showing what happens one moment with one group and at the same time that’s going on what the other group is doing in the next chapter. Hennesy had to give the characters seperate traits making them unique throughout the story and not too much like the other so readers would have a variety, that’s why Iole is incredibly smart (and you know the wider vocabulary you have the more difficult words you’re going to use in sentences,) Homer is “from the valley,” Alcia is the gorgeous slow yet bright friend and Pandora, of course, is the one who is the heoin with a magical power and the help of the Gods. It’s a FANTASY, of course there’s going to be things that aren’t typical for everyday life, it’s not supposed to be completely realistic. Of course your tolerence for the book is going to be less and less as the series goes on because obviously you’re older than the intended reader.