Scan barcode
thistlechaser's review against another edition
5.0
(Book received for free for review from Fiction Addiction.)
A year ago, there was one single self-published book I liked and a pile of ones that I hated. This year it seems almost the reverse!
The Narrowing Path is self-published, but it's darned good. One of the most enjoyable books I've read in a long time, and nearly error-free in editing. I spotted maybe ten typos or other mistakes total (eight of them in one single short chapter, I think somehow it must have fallen through the editing process somehow; there were basic mistakes like "The sun was bright, so he shut his mind for a moment."). Outside of that one problem chapter, the mistakes were very minor (like a space before a period at the end of a sentence). I think most readers wouldn't even notice them (other than that mind/eye word switch).
But! The story! Wow. Take Hunger Games and make it more serious and more brutal. I'm not at all saying that it's a knock off of that series, but the similarity is there.
Narrowing Path takes place on another planet. That planet has the misfortune of having a very large moon, large enough that it messes up the orbit. Once every six years, the planet moves too close to the sun for people to survive. They've built caves under the ocean which are just barely cool enough to let people survive that two week period, but they're in no way big enough for all humans on the planet to enter.
There are four main families in the country the story takes place in. Men rule the families, have multiple wives, and thus many children. So, in the months before the sun burns everything, they send all teenage boys off to walk the Path.
To survive the Path, the boys (Greens) have to succeed in some way -- in business, in "war" (fighting in an arena), or in leadership of men (their fellow Greens). Problem is, the society is a very strong caste system, and most of the boys live their whole life up to that point in their family's complex. They never deal with the outside world, other families, or the majority of the population (the poor).
A quarter into the book and I was worried. I was loving this world so much, I was concerned that the book would end and we'd never find out what the girls had to do (they don't walk the Path). The poor too, they can't ALL be killed off every six years... But yay, by the end of the book it was all explained! (Which lead to one of the very few things I disliked: Female teens were called "Greenettes". It makes sense, but... ugh. I hated that name.)
So the plot of the book follows one of the boys. Through the couple months before the planet gets broiled, his eyes get opened, he learns the truth of the Path, loses his naivete, and has to figure out how to save not just himself, but others he's picked up along the way. Talk about character growth!
This was one brutal book (and a YA book, no less!). The kids were killing each other, plotting, etc. And the adults (who had all survived the Path in previous 6 year periods) gleefully took advantage of the kids at every turn.
And did I mention only three teens out of all that "generation" (6 year period) would be picked by the adults to be saved? (And each of them could pick one other to come with them, which added interest to the 'leadership' branch of the Path -- imagine a kid having six defenders, but they all know only one will be picked by him in the end! Assuming the leader is even picked to begin with!)
This was a brutal, dark book, and I loved it. There was a small romantic subplot, and while I usually dislike those, this one seemed really realistic for a 13 year old boy and I actually enjoyed it. I can't wait for the next books in the series! Highly recommended (except for followers of mine who don't like books that put children in danger -- this is very much not for you!).
A year ago, there was one single self-published book I liked and a pile of ones that I hated. This year it seems almost the reverse!
The Narrowing Path is self-published, but it's darned good. One of the most enjoyable books I've read in a long time, and nearly error-free in editing. I spotted maybe ten typos or other mistakes total (eight of them in one single short chapter, I think somehow it must have fallen through the editing process somehow; there were basic mistakes like "The sun was bright, so he shut his mind for a moment."). Outside of that one problem chapter, the mistakes were very minor (like a space before a period at the end of a sentence). I think most readers wouldn't even notice them (other than that mind/eye word switch).
But! The story! Wow. Take Hunger Games and make it more serious and more brutal. I'm not at all saying that it's a knock off of that series, but the similarity is there.
Narrowing Path takes place on another planet. That planet has the misfortune of having a very large moon, large enough that it messes up the orbit. Once every six years, the planet moves too close to the sun for people to survive. They've built caves under the ocean which are just barely cool enough to let people survive that two week period, but they're in no way big enough for all humans on the planet to enter.
There are four main families in the country the story takes place in. Men rule the families, have multiple wives, and thus many children. So, in the months before the sun burns everything, they send all teenage boys off to walk the Path.
To survive the Path, the boys (Greens) have to succeed in some way -- in business, in "war" (fighting in an arena), or in leadership of men (their fellow Greens). Problem is, the society is a very strong caste system, and most of the boys live their whole life up to that point in their family's complex. They never deal with the outside world, other families, or the majority of the population (the poor).
A quarter into the book and I was worried. I was loving this world so much, I was concerned that the book would end and we'd never find out what the girls had to do (they don't walk the Path). The poor too, they can't ALL be killed off every six years... But yay, by the end of the book it was all explained! (Which lead to one of the very few things I disliked: Female teens were called "Greenettes". It makes sense, but... ugh. I hated that name.)
So the plot of the book follows one of the boys. Through the couple months before the planet gets broiled, his eyes get opened, he learns the truth of the Path, loses his naivete, and has to figure out how to save not just himself, but others he's picked up along the way. Talk about character growth!
This was one brutal book (and a YA book, no less!). The kids were killing each other, plotting, etc. And the adults (who had all survived the Path in previous 6 year periods) gleefully took advantage of the kids at every turn.
And did I mention only three teens out of all that "generation" (6 year period) would be picked by the adults to be saved? (And each of them could pick one other to come with them, which added interest to the 'leadership' branch of the Path -- imagine a kid having six defenders, but they all know only one will be picked by him in the end! Assuming the leader is even picked to begin with!)
This was a brutal, dark book, and I loved it. There was a small romantic subplot, and while I usually dislike those, this one seemed really realistic for a 13 year old boy and I actually enjoyed it. I can't wait for the next books in the series! Highly recommended (except for followers of mine who don't like books that put children in danger -- this is very much not for you!).
elephant's review against another edition
3.0
Similar to Hunger Games, teenagers are set up to fight one another for the right to survive. This novel, however is bloodier than Hunger Games and the "green path" is not really defined, rather the reader has to try to figure out what is going on. The book cover is misleading because there is not an actual physical "path".
I am not sure that I really understand the premise of the story. Apparantly, every 6 years, a star is too close to earth or whatever planet they are on and the heat is too intense to survive. In Arcandis, there are only a limited number of places in the Refuge, caverns underground where people can live through the Infernam. For some reason, the teenage boys of the noble families are pitted against one another in a bloody fight/game/strategy to survive and be chosen for one of the 6 spots available for young men of nobility.
The girls, however, are allowed to survive as long as a noble man will agree to take her as one of his many wives.
Bowe is 13 and the only remaining member of the Bellanger family - one of the 4 noble families in this city. He decides to buck the rules, and save not only himself, but others as well in an attempt to change the bizarre rules that his city follows.
I found the story to be interesting, but confusing, and in need of better editing. I got the book free to review from Netgalley.
I am not sure that I really understand the premise of the story. Apparantly, every 6 years, a star is too close to earth or whatever planet they are on and the heat is too intense to survive. In Arcandis, there are only a limited number of places in the Refuge, caverns underground where people can live through the Infernam. For some reason, the teenage boys of the noble families are pitted against one another in a bloody fight/game/strategy to survive and be chosen for one of the 6 spots available for young men of nobility.
The girls, however, are allowed to survive as long as a noble man will agree to take her as one of his many wives.
Bowe is 13 and the only remaining member of the Bellanger family - one of the 4 noble families in this city. He decides to buck the rules, and save not only himself, but others as well in an attempt to change the bizarre rules that his city follows.
I found the story to be interesting, but confusing, and in need of better editing. I got the book free to review from Netgalley.
bibliotropic's review
3.0
It’s hard to read the first 1/3 of this book and not make Hunger Games comparisons. A group of teenagers pitted against each other in a monitored and timed brutal competition, and the survivor(s) are assured prestige and a place in the world to come. These days, it’s hard to write a story with those elements appearing at any point without people drawing those comparisons, thanks to the popularity of The Hunger Games. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if that’s what the author’s going for, and if that’s what readers want to read.
But happily, there’s far more to this novel than something that just feels like it’s trying to ride the coattails of a popular franchise. The Narrowing Path follows the story of Bowe, last of the Bellanger family, at an age where he can begin on the Green Path and force his way to salvation by eliminating competitors. This isn’t just some brutal scheme to keep people in line or control the population. Bowe is fighting to become an ascor, one of society’s elite, and earn his place in the Refuge so that he can survive the approaching heat of the Infernam. If he doesn’t, then the only option is death. But Bowe isn’t happy with the Path before him, and he seeks to change it, subvert it, and forge a new Path for himself and those close to him.
Normoyle’s writing is pretty good, and he can paint a clear word-picture of what’s going on. The characters he writes are fairly distinct, though the increasing cast of characters toward the end sometimes made it tricky to keep track of who’s doing what and why. Once or twice characters were introduced who really added nothing to the story, leaving me with another name to keep track of and nothing more. Perhaps they become more important later on in the series, I’m not sure, but at least here, they don’t do much besides have their name known and be part of what Bowe is trying to accomplish.
The society set up in Arcandis is an interesting one. It’s highly stratified, with ascor being the elite of society and escay being the bottom ranks. Escay can rise through the ranks by becoming marshals (your basic law enforcers), and then getting raised to ascor for loyal service, but it’s rare. Ascor look down on escay, seeing themselves as far above the concerns of the rabble. It’s not an uncommon society to play with in novels like this, really, but what I found most interesting about it was the way society was shaped by the Infernam, which is the period of intense heat that comes every six years.
However, it’s not perfect, and there are some discrepancies that don’t quite add up for me. It’s Ascor who typically end up with guaranteed or near-guaranteed places within the Refuge, but a Green’s rise to ascor is, well, along a narrow path. Very few of Bowe’s peers typically become ascor and get to survive. The rest get killed. The majority of escay die by just not being able to afford Refuge. But the population sizes don’t really reflect that. Yes, ascor men typically have multiple wives and there’s probably a whole lot of breeding going on, but the ascor should very quickly outnumber the escay, and most escay would likely be ones in direct service to ascor (who could thus get into the Refuge more easily) and any children under 6, who haven’t experienced the Infernam yet. You’re likely end up with no escay not being in service to ascor, and their families having been in service for generations. And that doesn’t seem to really be the case as presented by the book. Not unless the people we see in The Narrowing Path represent about half the entire population of either group.
I find population problems to be a common one with dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, and they don’t seem to bother most readers, so I may be the exception here that actually finds this somewhat irritating. I also admit that this discrepancy could well be something addressed in a later novel. There are plenty of hints dropped along the way that indicate far more going on that just what’s on the surface, and while some of them get only a passing mention that seems disproportionate to their potential impact, it does leave things wide open for a greater exploration of some ideas in the future.
Similarly, the issue of food doesn’t really get addressed either. Food-producing farms are mentioned, and it’s logical to think that 6 years of growing seasons could result in a surplus to stockpile if you get lucky and control things well enough, but if the world becomes too hot for humans to survive in without either dying or going deep underground, that’s going to take a toll on the world’s ability to produce crops. I can’t imagine people emerging from the underground caves and going right back to planting and plowing. It would take time for things to cool down again, for the land to recover enough for crops to be grown once more. And yet this seems to be enough of a non-issue that Bowe find people selling carved trinkets at an escay market, which indicates the leisure time to throw into decorative items.
So while the issue of the Infernam is definitely one that is shown to shape society at large, there are a lot of holes in the story when it comes to practicalities.
I’m a bit on the fence about gender presentation in this book, I admit. On one hand, the story is told from the perspective of a teenage boy in a tough situation, in a society where gender roles are pretty rigidly enforced, so it’s not like I expected Bowe’s group to have a whole load of women in it. But from what I recall, there were a total of 4 women with names in this entire novel: 1 who killed herself, 1 who did nothing but glare from a distance, 1 who helped Bowe and whom Bowe had a thing for but felt horrible about it because of class differences, and 1 whose biggest role was to regret that she was too ugly to get a husband and so would probably not get into the Refuge. That’s it. It’s not exactly overflowing with positive tropes; even Iyra, arguably the most interesting and involved female character, was primarily there to further Bowe’s goals and be a romantic interest. That’s not good.
It’s easy to argue that this kind of gender presentation is fitting with the society that was being written about, and that’s true. It was. But more and more I’m agreeing with people when they say that’s not an excuse; the author is the one who creates the society, and thus the author is the one who bears the responsibility for what casts of characters like this imply. You don’t have to have every female character be a kick-ass superheroine, but when the character who does the most is mostly there to confuse Bowe’s sexual morals, it doesn’t come across very well.
I do, however, have to give Normoyle some points for inverting the “being thin is the only way to be beautiful” stereotype for women. Here, girls who are well fed and have some curves to them are considered more attractive than ones who are thinner. Makes sense, considering the ascor’s abundance, and I did like to see that aspect being dealt with.
Another sticking point, and one that felt prevalent throughout The Narrowing Path was, for me, the fact that Bowe does not act at all like the 13 year old that he is. If he was 16 or 17, I might believe it. His patterns of speech, his behaviour, his ability to see and manipulate complex patterns, the way people follow him and his ideals, none of it comes off like a person who only relatively recently hit a double-digit age. It’s difficult to see people a few years older take him as seriously as they did (especially in a cut-throat competition), let alone the adults who so easily bowed to his logic and grasp of politics. It just wasn’t something I could believe. Not without Bowe having shown ridiculous amounts of promise early on, which clearly wasn’t the case since everybody, including Bowe himself, expected to die on the first day. He comes across as far older than he actually is, and the only way for me to make it seem less incongruent was to mentally picture him as being in his late teens rather than his very early teens.
So in the end, The Narrowing Path was a decent beginning to a series that’s definitely more YA than adult, though it does have some darker themes running through it and it doesn’t shy away from blood and violence and despair. It has its strengths, and a lot of the flaws that I mentioned are ones that I don’t notice so much while reading as I notice them in retrospect, when examining the novel specifically for review and critique; it’s easy to fall into the story and ignore the little bits that don’t get addressed or don’t make sense because Normoyle’s writing is, as I said earlier, pretty good. But that doesn’t mean the problems aren’t still there. I can recommend this to people who are fans of YA dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, because it is a fun read and it is still good; for the genre and the intended audience, I’d say it’s on par with a lot of other offerings out there, and so is probably worth taking a look at if you have the chance.
(Received for review as part of the SPFBO.)
But happily, there’s far more to this novel than something that just feels like it’s trying to ride the coattails of a popular franchise. The Narrowing Path follows the story of Bowe, last of the Bellanger family, at an age where he can begin on the Green Path and force his way to salvation by eliminating competitors. This isn’t just some brutal scheme to keep people in line or control the population. Bowe is fighting to become an ascor, one of society’s elite, and earn his place in the Refuge so that he can survive the approaching heat of the Infernam. If he doesn’t, then the only option is death. But Bowe isn’t happy with the Path before him, and he seeks to change it, subvert it, and forge a new Path for himself and those close to him.
Normoyle’s writing is pretty good, and he can paint a clear word-picture of what’s going on. The characters he writes are fairly distinct, though the increasing cast of characters toward the end sometimes made it tricky to keep track of who’s doing what and why. Once or twice characters were introduced who really added nothing to the story, leaving me with another name to keep track of and nothing more. Perhaps they become more important later on in the series, I’m not sure, but at least here, they don’t do much besides have their name known and be part of what Bowe is trying to accomplish.
The society set up in Arcandis is an interesting one. It’s highly stratified, with ascor being the elite of society and escay being the bottom ranks. Escay can rise through the ranks by becoming marshals (your basic law enforcers), and then getting raised to ascor for loyal service, but it’s rare. Ascor look down on escay, seeing themselves as far above the concerns of the rabble. It’s not an uncommon society to play with in novels like this, really, but what I found most interesting about it was the way society was shaped by the Infernam, which is the period of intense heat that comes every six years.
However, it’s not perfect, and there are some discrepancies that don’t quite add up for me. It’s Ascor who typically end up with guaranteed or near-guaranteed places within the Refuge, but a Green’s rise to ascor is, well, along a narrow path. Very few of Bowe’s peers typically become ascor and get to survive. The rest get killed. The majority of escay die by just not being able to afford Refuge. But the population sizes don’t really reflect that. Yes, ascor men typically have multiple wives and there’s probably a whole lot of breeding going on, but the ascor should very quickly outnumber the escay, and most escay would likely be ones in direct service to ascor (who could thus get into the Refuge more easily) and any children under 6, who haven’t experienced the Infernam yet. You’re likely end up with no escay not being in service to ascor, and their families having been in service for generations. And that doesn’t seem to really be the case as presented by the book. Not unless the people we see in The Narrowing Path represent about half the entire population of either group.
I find population problems to be a common one with dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, and they don’t seem to bother most readers, so I may be the exception here that actually finds this somewhat irritating. I also admit that this discrepancy could well be something addressed in a later novel. There are plenty of hints dropped along the way that indicate far more going on that just what’s on the surface, and while some of them get only a passing mention that seems disproportionate to their potential impact, it does leave things wide open for a greater exploration of some ideas in the future.
Similarly, the issue of food doesn’t really get addressed either. Food-producing farms are mentioned, and it’s logical to think that 6 years of growing seasons could result in a surplus to stockpile if you get lucky and control things well enough, but if the world becomes too hot for humans to survive in without either dying or going deep underground, that’s going to take a toll on the world’s ability to produce crops. I can’t imagine people emerging from the underground caves and going right back to planting and plowing. It would take time for things to cool down again, for the land to recover enough for crops to be grown once more. And yet this seems to be enough of a non-issue that Bowe find people selling carved trinkets at an escay market, which indicates the leisure time to throw into decorative items.
So while the issue of the Infernam is definitely one that is shown to shape society at large, there are a lot of holes in the story when it comes to practicalities.
I’m a bit on the fence about gender presentation in this book, I admit. On one hand, the story is told from the perspective of a teenage boy in a tough situation, in a society where gender roles are pretty rigidly enforced, so it’s not like I expected Bowe’s group to have a whole load of women in it. But from what I recall, there were a total of 4 women with names in this entire novel: 1 who killed herself, 1 who did nothing but glare from a distance, 1 who helped Bowe and whom Bowe had a thing for but felt horrible about it because of class differences, and 1 whose biggest role was to regret that she was too ugly to get a husband and so would probably not get into the Refuge. That’s it. It’s not exactly overflowing with positive tropes; even Iyra, arguably the most interesting and involved female character, was primarily there to further Bowe’s goals and be a romantic interest. That’s not good.
It’s easy to argue that this kind of gender presentation is fitting with the society that was being written about, and that’s true. It was. But more and more I’m agreeing with people when they say that’s not an excuse; the author is the one who creates the society, and thus the author is the one who bears the responsibility for what casts of characters like this imply. You don’t have to have every female character be a kick-ass superheroine, but when the character who does the most is mostly there to confuse Bowe’s sexual morals, it doesn’t come across very well.
I do, however, have to give Normoyle some points for inverting the “being thin is the only way to be beautiful” stereotype for women. Here, girls who are well fed and have some curves to them are considered more attractive than ones who are thinner. Makes sense, considering the ascor’s abundance, and I did like to see that aspect being dealt with.
Another sticking point, and one that felt prevalent throughout The Narrowing Path was, for me, the fact that Bowe does not act at all like the 13 year old that he is. If he was 16 or 17, I might believe it. His patterns of speech, his behaviour, his ability to see and manipulate complex patterns, the way people follow him and his ideals, none of it comes off like a person who only relatively recently hit a double-digit age. It’s difficult to see people a few years older take him as seriously as they did (especially in a cut-throat competition), let alone the adults who so easily bowed to his logic and grasp of politics. It just wasn’t something I could believe. Not without Bowe having shown ridiculous amounts of promise early on, which clearly wasn’t the case since everybody, including Bowe himself, expected to die on the first day. He comes across as far older than he actually is, and the only way for me to make it seem less incongruent was to mentally picture him as being in his late teens rather than his very early teens.
So in the end, The Narrowing Path was a decent beginning to a series that’s definitely more YA than adult, though it does have some darker themes running through it and it doesn’t shy away from blood and violence and despair. It has its strengths, and a lot of the flaws that I mentioned are ones that I don’t notice so much while reading as I notice them in retrospect, when examining the novel specifically for review and critique; it’s easy to fall into the story and ignore the little bits that don’t get addressed or don’t make sense because Normoyle’s writing is, as I said earlier, pretty good. But that doesn’t mean the problems aren’t still there. I can recommend this to people who are fans of YA dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, because it is a fun read and it is still good; for the genre and the intended audience, I’d say it’s on par with a lot of other offerings out there, and so is probably worth taking a look at if you have the chance.
(Received for review as part of the SPFBO.)
More...