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thenarratress's review
I hoped to like it but I had a hard time doing so. I did not like the characters and the world confused me
tbhonest_uk's review against another edition
5.0
Glass Town Wars is a mind-blowing and thrilling read that fans of Ready Player One and Mary Hoffman's Stravganza series will love.
It's an original and gripping tale that will leave you on the edge of your seat.
It's an original and gripping tale that will leave you on the edge of your seat.
wxrldwalker's review
2.0
You know when you read a book and it's SO GOOD you can't put it down- you take it while you're travelling, while studying, you sneak glances at it and even take selfies with it because it's just THAT good?
Yeah, this ain't one of them...
I agree with the majority when I say that I finished this book and didn't know what the hell I just read. And let me explain. Firstly, the characters were two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs. I couldn't connect with any of them! They had no motivations other than to get out of a bad situation, only to land themselves in another- even worse- setting.
The plot...did you see it? Because I didn't. And let me tell you- the synopsis is there to misguide you. How can you write a book with a synopsis that matches only 2% of what this book is actually about? This Glass Town setting was so interesting but wasn't built upon. The author was trying to create a world initially introduced by the Brontës, and what did she do? She took their imaginations and snippets of writing only to make it dull and boring- even my curries have more flavour than this book!
So in summary, all the things I disliked/hated about this book:
- The characters
- The plot
- The writing style was so fragmented and bland
- The world-building was meh
- There was a villain-ish character in this book that wasn't ever revealed- why he did what he did- and was just as easily caught (wtf!)
- I still don't understand the dynamics of this story
- The descriptions were long and winded
- The romance element was cringy
- Quick POV changes that confused the hell out of me
- the worst thing about this: THERE ARE SO MANY FRICKIN' CHARACTERS!!!
What I remotely liked:
- The Glass Town descriptions (which weren't expanded on- and had so much potential, but alas :'(
it wasn't meant to be- and I can see why this only has about 13 ratings/reviews...
I'm only glad I didn't spend money on buying this trash because it costs a lot and I would punch myself in the face if I spent my money on this...
Yeah, this ain't one of them...
I agree with the majority when I say that I finished this book and didn't know what the hell I just read. And let me explain. Firstly, the characters were two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs. I couldn't connect with any of them! They had no motivations other than to get out of a bad situation, only to land themselves in another- even worse- setting.
The plot...did you see it? Because I didn't. And let me tell you- the synopsis is there to misguide you. How can you write a book with a synopsis that matches only 2% of what this book is actually about? This Glass Town setting was so interesting but wasn't built upon. The author was trying to create a world initially introduced by the Brontës, and what did she do? She took their imaginations and snippets of writing only to make it dull and boring- even my curries have more flavour than this book!
So in summary, all the things I disliked/hated about this book:
- The characters
- The plot
- The writing style was so fragmented and bland
- The world-building was meh
- There was a villain-ish character in this book that wasn't ever revealed- why he did what he did- and was just as easily caught (wtf!)
- I still don't understand the dynamics of this story
- The descriptions were long and winded
- The romance element was cringy
- Quick POV changes that confused the hell out of me
- the worst thing about this: THERE ARE SO MANY FRICKIN' CHARACTERS!!!
What I remotely liked:
- The Glass Town descriptions (which weren't expanded on- and had so much potential, but alas :'(
it wasn't meant to be- and I can see why this only has about 13 ratings/reviews...
I'm only glad I didn't spend money on buying this trash because it costs a lot and I would punch myself in the face if I spent my money on this...
taintedtea's review
2.0
***I received an uncorrected proof of this ebook from netgalley in exchange for an honest review***
Nothing is straightforward. Nothing is as it seems...
As in life, so in dreams.✝
⭐⭐
Well... this book was a bit of a confusing mess, as was its intent I think? Unfortunately, there were always more questions than answers. The protagonist, like the reader, was new the the Glass Town world but... he didn't ask enough questions. He just kind of went along with all of the chaos and dragged us along for the ride.
This book felt somewhat like a fever dream... some sort of amalgamation of various plot threads going in every direction. Connecting, but also not connecting at all. I was very confused- to the point I needed to jot down little notes to keep track of all of the characters and their motivations... Which, the motivations of almost every single character were very opaque. They wanted power, or freedom?? Money?? I don't really know...
I loved Celia Rees' books when I was younger. They're some of the only middle grade books that stayed on my shelf into adulthood (specifically: Pirates, Witch Child, and Sorceress). I was actually really excited to get approved for this book; but it just didn't do it for me. I almost wonder if I'm a little bit too old to be engaged by the wondrous chaos of the Glass Town world... I could see younger readers loving this.
✝check against final text
Nothing is straightforward. Nothing is as it seems...
As in life, so in dreams.✝
⭐⭐
Well... this book was a bit of a confusing mess, as was its intent I think? Unfortunately, there were always more questions than answers. The protagonist, like the reader, was new the the Glass Town world but... he didn't ask enough questions. He just kind of went along with all of the chaos and dragged us along for the ride.
This book felt somewhat like a fever dream... some sort of amalgamation of various plot threads going in every direction. Connecting, but also not connecting at all. I was very confused- to the point I needed to jot down little notes to keep track of all of the characters and their motivations... Which, the motivations of almost every single character were very opaque. They wanted power, or freedom?? Money?? I don't really know...
I loved Celia Rees' books when I was younger. They're some of the only middle grade books that stayed on my shelf into adulthood (specifically: Pirates, Witch Child, and Sorceress). I was actually really excited to get approved for this book; but it just didn't do it for me. I almost wonder if I'm a little bit too old to be engaged by the wondrous chaos of the Glass Town world... I could see younger readers loving this.
✝check against final text
heathssm's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
alanahhill's review
0.25
I still have no idea what I read or what happened it this book. All I know is that I really did not enjoy it
heavenlybookish's review
1.0
'Glass Town Wars' had a unique plot but couldn't keep my attention
Glass Town Wars by Celia Rees ★
"The next day, all that was left to show was a faint staining on the marble piazza, pink on grey."
I received this e-book from Netgalley. This does not affect my review or opinion. All thoughts are my own and I'm being 100 per cent honest. Thank you to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for providing me this e-book for reviewing purposes.
I don't like to write negative reviews, but I really did not like this book. The blurb made the plot sound so unique and interesting and I was so excited to read this book. However, from very early on I already knew this wasn't going to be amazing. Throughout most of the book I had no idea what was going on. The story couldn't keep my attention.
Go to my blog to read the full review https://www.heavenlybookish.be/post/glass-town-wars-had-a-unique-plot-but-couldn-t-keep-my-attention
Glass Town Wars by Celia Rees ★
"The next day, all that was left to show was a faint staining on the marble piazza, pink on grey."
I received this e-book from Netgalley. This does not affect my review or opinion. All thoughts are my own and I'm being 100 per cent honest. Thank you to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for providing me this e-book for reviewing purposes.
I don't like to write negative reviews, but I really did not like this book. The blurb made the plot sound so unique and interesting and I was so excited to read this book. However, from very early on I already knew this wasn't going to be amazing. Throughout most of the book I had no idea what was going on. The story couldn't keep my attention.
Go to my blog to read the full review https://www.heavenlybookish.be/post/glass-town-wars-had-a-unique-plot-but-couldn-t-keep-my-attention
dullhilarity's review
2.0
2/5 stars
Well, that was a bit of a flop unfortunately.
I picked this up thinking it would be a really cool and unique YA sci-fi fantasy. It's about this boy, Tom, who is in a coma but in his dreams he is transported into a game set in a place called Glass Town.
This book had potential, that's why I picked it up. However, I didn't root for any of the characters, thought the majority of the book itself was cliched and a lot of the ideas discussed felt like they had been done many times over. The world building was fine, as was the writing style. No problems there for me. Actually, sometimes the descriptions of Glass Town were quite well done.
But overall, the whole book was really disappointing for something that could have been so good, but sadly missed the mark.
Would I recommend to a friend? /// Sadly no.
Well, that was a bit of a flop unfortunately.
I picked this up thinking it would be a really cool and unique YA sci-fi fantasy. It's about this boy, Tom, who is in a coma but in his dreams he is transported into a game set in a place called Glass Town.
This book had potential, that's why I picked it up. However, I didn't root for any of the characters, thought the majority of the book itself was cliched and a lot of the ideas discussed felt like they had been done many times over. The world building was fine, as was the writing style. No problems there for me. Actually, sometimes the descriptions of Glass Town were quite well done.
But overall, the whole book was really disappointing for something that could have been so good, but sadly missed the mark.
Would I recommend to a friend? /// Sadly no.
girlwithherheadinabook's review
2.0
For my full review: https://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/2020/05/review-glass-town-wars-celia-rees.html
Celia Rees was one of my favourite authors when I was a teenager. She wrote Witch Child, which it felt like most of the girls in my year group read and loved. I also loved its sequel Sorceress. Then there was Pirates! which I reread repeatedly. Truth or Dare was another book of hers that stuck in my mind. So although it has been about fifteen years since I last read one of her novels, I was actually pretty excited when I saw that she had written a young adult novel based around the Brontë juvenilia. I thought this had the potential to be a really intriguing re-imagining of the Angria and Gondal mythology. What I read though was just ... odd.
The novel opens with Tom in a coma. He's a teenage boy who has had some form of unspecified accident that merits the social media hashtag #heroinacoma. Watching over him is his cheating girlfriend Natalie and his "best friend" (who is the one Natalie is cheating with), Milo. With greater sincere concern, another girl Lucy comes every day to read to him and his nurse Joe is also keeping a close eye. But then Milo sneakily puts something in his eye which is described as like a Babelfish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and suddenly comatose Tom's dreams switch him to the world of Glass Town.
There are obvious issues with this set up. It's full of clichés. The catalyst for the drama is a vaguely described Babelfish-esque 'thingummy' which never really hangs together. The nurse Joe is a real deus ex machina available to step in and solve everything when the plot gets boxed into a corner. It was such a disappointment compared to the far more richly-realised stories in Rees' other novels. I also never really understood what the 'point' of the story was. It seemed like Tom just had a brief (albeit dramatic) tour of Glass Town and then ... what? He decided he liked the Brontës and had a day out to Haworth? Is that it?
It's such a shame because Rees' descriptions of the Glass Town universe were genuinely interesting. The glass buildings, the political insurrection, the vividly drawn characters - even Charles Wellesley's unsteady worry that they might all be fictional was intriguing. I had a look at some other people's reviews and was interested to note how several of them were rather baffled as they came to it as YA fans rather than Brontëphiles and so could not keep track of what was going on. While my past reading meant I avoided this, I think that some kind of character index or even a map would have made it more accessible for others.
One idea that I found quite thought-provoking was the parallel drawn between the Angria and Gondal stories and modern video gaming. Other than Spyro and The Sims, I am not much of a gamer. However, in the spirit of sharing your partner's interests, I did have a go at Bioshock a few years ago. While I did not really get on with the gameplay (I'm not quick enough on the trigger so I resorted beating the mad surgeon to death with a spanner to get past the first Boss level), I could really see how it was in itself a different form of story-telling. Boy Who Reads Not A Lot loved Bioshock as a teenager and I could understand why. The Brontë siblings used their Angria and Gondal characters as avatars in a very similar way and it was really interesting to see Rees explore that idea further. It's just a shame that this plot strand never really goes anywhere.
Although I did enjoy the section of the book in Glass Town, on the whole it failed to engage me. I found Augusta a rather flat heroine, which was another disappointment because I know Rees is capable of much more impressive female characterisation. I also found the 'romance' between Tom and Augusta ... baffling. Low chemistry doesn't even begin to describe it. Even the glimpses we got of the real Emily felt under-drawn and I felt really sad that we didn't see Gondal as a collaborative enterprise between Emily and Anne. I had expected Glass Town Wars to reflect more directly the battle between the opposing camps of Charlotte and Branwell versus Emily and Anne as each tried to maintain dominance over the narrative. Instead we got this limp internal struggle and it felt utterly lack-lustre. I continue to think highly of Celia Rees as a writer but sadly Glass Town Wars does not put up much of a fight.
Celia Rees was one of my favourite authors when I was a teenager. She wrote Witch Child, which it felt like most of the girls in my year group read and loved. I also loved its sequel Sorceress. Then there was Pirates! which I reread repeatedly. Truth or Dare was another book of hers that stuck in my mind. So although it has been about fifteen years since I last read one of her novels, I was actually pretty excited when I saw that she had written a young adult novel based around the Brontë juvenilia. I thought this had the potential to be a really intriguing re-imagining of the Angria and Gondal mythology. What I read though was just ... odd.
The novel opens with Tom in a coma. He's a teenage boy who has had some form of unspecified accident that merits the social media hashtag #heroinacoma. Watching over him is his cheating girlfriend Natalie and his "best friend" (who is the one Natalie is cheating with), Milo. With greater sincere concern, another girl Lucy comes every day to read to him and his nurse Joe is also keeping a close eye. But then Milo sneakily puts something in his eye which is described as like a Babelfish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and suddenly comatose Tom's dreams switch him to the world of Glass Town.
There are obvious issues with this set up. It's full of clichés. The catalyst for the drama is a vaguely described Babelfish-esque 'thingummy' which never really hangs together. The nurse Joe is a real deus ex machina available to step in and solve everything when the plot gets boxed into a corner. It was such a disappointment compared to the far more richly-realised stories in Rees' other novels. I also never really understood what the 'point' of the story was. It seemed like Tom just had a brief (albeit dramatic) tour of Glass Town and then ... what? He decided he liked the Brontës and had a day out to Haworth? Is that it?
It's such a shame because Rees' descriptions of the Glass Town universe were genuinely interesting. The glass buildings, the political insurrection, the vividly drawn characters - even Charles Wellesley's unsteady worry that they might all be fictional was intriguing. I had a look at some other people's reviews and was interested to note how several of them were rather baffled as they came to it as YA fans rather than Brontëphiles and so could not keep track of what was going on. While my past reading meant I avoided this, I think that some kind of character index or even a map would have made it more accessible for others.
One idea that I found quite thought-provoking was the parallel drawn between the Angria and Gondal stories and modern video gaming. Other than Spyro and The Sims, I am not much of a gamer. However, in the spirit of sharing your partner's interests, I did have a go at Bioshock a few years ago. While I did not really get on with the gameplay (I'm not quick enough on the trigger so I resorted beating the mad surgeon to death with a spanner to get past the first Boss level), I could really see how it was in itself a different form of story-telling. Boy Who Reads Not A Lot loved Bioshock as a teenager and I could understand why. The Brontë siblings used their Angria and Gondal characters as avatars in a very similar way and it was really interesting to see Rees explore that idea further. It's just a shame that this plot strand never really goes anywhere.
Although I did enjoy the section of the book in Glass Town, on the whole it failed to engage me. I found Augusta a rather flat heroine, which was another disappointment because I know Rees is capable of much more impressive female characterisation. I also found the 'romance' between Tom and Augusta ... baffling. Low chemistry doesn't even begin to describe it. Even the glimpses we got of the real Emily felt under-drawn and I felt really sad that we didn't see Gondal as a collaborative enterprise between Emily and Anne. I had expected Glass Town Wars to reflect more directly the battle between the opposing camps of Charlotte and Branwell versus Emily and Anne as each tried to maintain dominance over the narrative. Instead we got this limp internal struggle and it felt utterly lack-lustre. I continue to think highly of Celia Rees as a writer but sadly Glass Town Wars does not put up much of a fight.
alyp01's review
3.0
This book starts out so confusing. For the first quarter, I had no idea what was happening and it made it difficult to care about the story. As we went along, things became clearer, but it was definitely piece by piece. It's important to read the synopsis and remember that this book is based on Emily Bronte, had I remembered that I might have understood a bit more.
I did like the plot idea of video games evolving past VR and actually letting you live the game. I can easily see developers wanting to go that way if the technology were there and it asks the question, is a virtual reality better than living in the real world? At what point does it cross a line?
The ending lacked some details I would have liked to know and was a bit lackluster after all that Tom went through. I am interested in learning more about Emily Bronte now, so kudos to the author for that!
Thanks to NetGalley for this free book in exchange for an honest review
I did like the plot idea of video games evolving past VR and actually letting you live the game. I can easily see developers wanting to go that way if the technology were there and it asks the question, is a virtual reality better than living in the real world? At what point does it cross a line?
The ending lacked some details I would have liked to know and was a bit lackluster after all that Tom went through. I am interested in learning more about Emily Bronte now, so kudos to the author for that!
Thanks to NetGalley for this free book in exchange for an honest review