Nik
What a pleasant surprise! My initial outrage over the interruption of our story turned quickly into delight. Admittedly, I'd grown a bit tired, by the last book, of the same old, same old. This book approaches things from a different angle. That in itself ends up being a wonderful thing, but even more wonderful is the return of the imaginative storytelling—and creative and whimsical prose—that captivated me in the first place.
This has been on my TBR list for years, but I had no idea what it was about or what to expect. It turns out this series is very different from what I thought it might be. It's utterly charming and enjoyable. What drew me in immediately was the colouring, which is really beautiful. Then I got to know the characters, who are entirely too cute. One of them is just a little chaos monster and I love them. Actually, so far, I pretty much love them all, which is rare for me—I'm usually irritated by everyone. Finally, the dialogue and interactions are just great: there were many little things which made me chuckle aloud, which—again—is rare for me.
I'm so happy I started this series. Really looking forward to the next volume.
I liked it by the end of the volume, but had a little trouble making sense of the writing and understanding what was going on. It didn't pull me in immediately, but it's pretty rare that that happens, so I stuck with it. By the end of the volume I really wanted to know what was going to happen next.
Random unstructured bits ‘n' bobs from my brain, having just finished this lovely story:
- The pacing of Nora's understanding was a little bit annoying. Like, in the beginning, she just seemed a bit thick, needing the same thing explained to her countless times. But then, in no time at all, she developed this astonishing self-awareness and recovered an inordinate amount of self-worth. It was a bit whiplash-y.- The story pace is great. The writing is simple and things move along very quickly. Sometimes I love getting lost in the prose and sometimes I appreciate that the words simply escort me to the world and leave me to get lost in there.- I was enjoying experiencing each one of Nora's lives. The transition to yeah-so-then-she-basically-lived-hundreds-of-lives felt rather abrupt.- I *get* why Nora felt the best life wasn't her own and ultimately had to give it up, but I don't have to be happy about it.- I appreciate that Nora ultimately recognised that she wasn't worthless, that without her bad things happened in other people's lives, BUT the tidy ending with the glimpses of the lives she'd experienced was just a bit too saccharine.- The message of you-don't-know-what-you're-missing-if-you-check-out lesson felt really heavy-handed at the end. I don't know about you, but for me it also completely missed its mark. On the contrary, almost-suicide seems *much* more appealing now. Living hundreds of lives, seeing the world, a choose-your-own-adventure version of my own life, all in a single minute, and returning to this version of me with the memory intact of all those lived experiences? Are you kidding me? That would be amazing.
tl;dr: Definitely not flawless, but a great story and one that will stay with me for quite some time.
Welp! I skimmed a few of the 1- and 2-star reviews, surprised there are so many. Not a lot, but enough to know that I'm something of an odd duck to think that this is perhaps better than Firefly Lane. Fly Away is not a shiny happy story. It's gut-wrenching, but it feels ... real. In the aftermath of a loved one's passing, we feel in excruciating detail and depth just how much the departed soul meant to the people in her life. One by one, we see them fall apart without her and fail each other in the process. The narrative jumps around quite a bit, both in time and perspective, but it works. There is heartbreak after heartbreak, but there is also healing, there is also redemption. And in the end, there is love. Always.
It's hard to pinpoint why this story is so much greater than the sum of its parts. There's nothing really remarkable about any of its bits. Maybe it's the timeline: the characters aren't much older than I and a lot of the references—music, TV shows, and the like—feel familiar. Maybe it's the themes of friendship and chosen family, to which most of us can probably relate to some extent. Whatever the reason, the most important mark of a good book is its unputdownability and, in that regard, Firefly Lane earns top marks: I stayed up all night and read it straight through (I foresee a nap in my future if I'm to make it through work today).
I didn't read the book's synopsis so it was a surprise to me that this time we get to hear from Charlotte. Auggie doesn't play much of a direct role in this one, but he's there. He connects everyone, and his story touches everyone else's story, too. Every story in this series is a worthwhile read. Recommended for absolutely everyone.
Really great trilogy. The individual stories were the usual mix of fascinating messed-upness we get from King, but it was the weaving of the details that really wowed me. You know those films with giant ensemble casts where we're shown individual vignettes but there's like this underlying thing that connects everyone? This was like that. Spread out over three books. With nary a lull or dull moment. Just fantastically skilful storytelling from one of the masters.
