Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow

my younger brother said he only liked this book, that he didn't love it. i asked why, and he said: i think diana wynne jones could've done it better. i can't help but agree.

there are pockets of loveliness throughout: i love the image of the gossamer line, the idea of magical train stations. i think this book is filled with strong and beautiful images, because i could envision all of the magical images in it extremely well. morrigan is an extremely down-to-earth character, believable and sweet and a little bit insecure. it's also a funny, witty book and the wittiness is very well placed.

it's a little too arbitrary in other places. ie: each of these children has a “knack”, an ability of some kind, ranging from supernatural to superhuman, but there's not really an explanation for it—makes the worldbuilding seem a little too random, somehow? i thought that it'd have something to do with wonder, and maybe it does, but i wasn't able to tell from the first book alone.

the antagonistic characters were very boring. the most interesting one goes and has their big evil villain speech and it made them a lot less interesting in my eyes. the speech is also meant to clarify what their big evil motives are, but only made me a lot more confused, and also unintimidated by them. people like morrigan's father corvus and her stepmother were supposed to be antagonistic in a way too, but come off comically evil rather than actually bad. same for noelle and baz.

but this wasn't boring! and the book held my attention very well while i had the audiobook on during work or at the gym. it's a light and easy enough read for sure. but i wish it could be a little darker, or realer—i KNOW it's a kid's book, but there are some parts where townsend seemed extremely interested in those darker and realer conversations, like the erasure of history, or the brief discussion of illegal immigration...i would like to see her embrace those concepts more, because they did not only interest me, but my younger brother! kids like having hard conversations!