Sunday, June 20, 2010

The Good Neighbors: Book One, Kin by Holly Black and Ted Naifeh

No spoilers.

Title:
The Good Neighbors: Book One, Kin
Author: Holly Black and Ted Naifeh
Year of Publication: 2008
Genre: YA, fantasy, manga
Pages: 117
First Line: "My name is Rue, like kangaroo or like 'you'll rue the day we met, mwa-ha-ha!'"

Summary: Rue Silver's lief isn't at all what it appears to be. Her mother has disappeared -- and her father is being blamed for a murder. Is he guilty? Or is there another truth beneath it all?

Rue digs deeper into her family's past and makes a startling discovery: Her mother is a faerie, and she has vanished back into the faerie realm because of a broken promise. In order to get her back, Rue must plunge into the depths of her own identity -- and must follow the sinister twists of her own fate.


Source: Back of book


Review: I love the idea for this, but I felt like it was missing something throughout. Usually I'm a big fan of Holly Black, but this book was definitely missing something -- it was as if she was relying too much on pictures to tell the story, which didn't work well at all. The graphics themselves were good in some ways -- the background and passerbys were pretty great. But the main characters weren't so much. They were DRAWN well, but the physical appearances of the characters didn't represent the characters personalities well. Because of my sick obsession with faerie, I will read the sequel, but I'm not expecting much from it. Maybe worth a look, if only for some of the faerie depictions?

Worst part: That missing part of the story. I still don't know what it is.

Best part: The ending was pretty surprising, I thought.

Grade: C

Other Books by This Author: (All Holly Black) Tithe, Valiant, the Poison Eaters, Ironside, Spiderwick Chronicles, the White Cat: Curse Workers series, and others.

Other Notes: Again, I am only counting graphic novels as 1/2 (half, .5) of a book for my count.


44 / 50 books. 88% done!

No comments:

Post a Comment