Review: White Space

White Space
Author:   Ilsa J. Bick

Publication Date:  February 11th 2014                           

~A copy was provided by Egmont USA via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

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 In the tradition of Memento and Inception comes a thrilling and scary young adult novel about blurred reality where characters in a story find that a deadly and horrifying world exists in the space between the written lines.

Seventeen-year-old Emma Lindsay has problems: a head full of metal, no parents, a crazy artist for a guardian whom a stroke has turned into a vegetable, and all those times when she blinks away, dropping into other lives so ghostly and surreal it's as if the story of her life bleeds into theirs. But one thing Emma has never doubted is that she's real.

Then she writes "White Space," a story about these kids stranded in a spooky house during a blizzard.

Unfortunately, "White Space" turns out to be a dead ringer for part of an unfinished novel by a long-dead writer. The manuscript, which she's never seen, is a loopy Matrix meets Inkheart story in which characters fall out of different books and jump off the page. Thing is, when Emma blinks, she might be doing the same and, before long, she's dropped into the very story she thought she'd written. Trapped in a weird, snow-choked valley, Emma meets other kids with dark secrets and strange abilities: Eric, Casey, Bode, Rima, and a very special little girl, Lizzie. What they discover is that they--and Emma--may be nothing more than characters written into being from an alternative universe for a very specific purpose.

Now what they must uncover is why they've been brought to this place--a world between the lines where parallel realities are created and destroyed and nightmares are written--before someone pens their end.

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It took me 8 hours over 6 days to finish this. Yes, it's longer than the usual, but I couldn't handle more than over an hour at a time because I literally couldn't take anymore of it.

So, who else thought this is going to be awesome when they heard The Matrix meets Inkheart?  I don't know whether to cry or go back to sleep. You know everybody who watched Lost from the beginning and towards the end though we're finally going to get it and then it ended like that and you wanted 6 years of your life back? I want my 6 days back. And then I realised it's only book one and of course I'm going to have to read book two because I want to know what's going on.



Obviously I like torturing myself, because I can say I completely disliked White Space, which is why I have given it a one.

Now, the concept is interesting and I was excited to find out, which plummeted after halfway with no idea what's going on and no explanation. We have words, and reasons, and names but you're just expected to know what these things are. There's no explanation and you're left too long out of the loop to actually figure out what the hell is going on. By the end I thought I had it, but no, so then I still had no freaking clue, I spent ten minutes just thinking have I missed something? Because I didn't get it, and struggling through the whole thing it was no pay off. It wasn't worth it and I felt cheated.

Inception was easier to figure out than this, which, if you take the jumble and complications away, has a base of what Inception is, a dream within a dream within a dream. So, you'd think that you'd be able to grasp that, right? Not so fast. While I did grasp what was going on in certain points it would change and I was lost again. You have a large cast, that although you know when the perspectives changed, they aren't that distinguishable, they all have the same type of voice, which in part I think was in purpose, since it is important to the storyline, but it doesn't make it any easier. Switching people, places, bits and pieces, with no explanation and weird things happening is a just a complete go-away, for you to actually wrap your head around.

It's also completely gory and very descriptive, with a lot of blood spill. Which, is the best part about it, but still, after all of that, and still I'm asking the same question.

What the fuck was that about?

White Space is the most confusing and infuriating book I've come across in a while, it's slow and just completely random, and loooooooooong.

 

Rating:  1/5