Hey everybody, it's Anna, and welcome back to my channel.
Today I am going to be bringing you a spoiler-y review of "The Glass Spare" by
Lauren DeStefano. "The Glass Spare" is a young adult fantasy novel about a girl
named Wil who, upon turning about 16 years old, discovers that she has the
power to turn people that she touches into glass: like gemstones, that kind of
thing. This follows Wil through her discovery of her powers, subsequent
flight from her family's kingdom, and what she does next.... Oh boy... I have so many
thoughts about this book! I really, really wanted to like this book, but I didn't,
and here's why: let's go ahead and go through the book step by step. I thought
that the opening act of the book, for one thing, was really strong. We get to know a
lot about Wil and her brother. Gerdie, who are both kind of the misfits of their
siblings- Wil because she's the girl and her father doesn't really care about her,
and Gerdie because when he was young, he got an illness that leaves him with, like,
a disability and just chronic illness. He gets sick very often. He's a genius!
I think that it is a good representation of chronic illness because it does it in
a realistic way that isn't pitying or magical. So it isn't just like, oh poor
Gerdie! Like everyone feels sorry for him because he has this disability, but it
also isn't like, I have magic powers because I'm sick all the time!
I can do special things!- like, he can do special things because he's a genius
alchemist, but it isn't any like weird disability-related tropes.
So Wil and Gerdie are really bonded close together, and it's actually Gerdie who
first figures out that Wil can turn living things to gems by her magical
touch. And then because a series of various family issues happen,
people think that Wil is dead, and Gerdie also thinks that Wil is dead, but
really she just has to go on the run to, like, get away from her father, because
she's worried that he's going to use her as like a spy: weaponize her, basically
exploit her ability to turn things into gems. About the moment when Wil decides
that she has to, like, get out of the kingdom
to escape her father, is where this book just sort of starts to go-- this is maybe
like a hundred pages into a 400 page book--so the first hundred pages, it seems
like it's a fairly standard sort of like, you're the princess but you're not like
the other princesses. You're just strong and powerful and you can kick butt and
you have powers--but then I feel like the story just really lost its narrative
thrust because Wil spends so much of the like middle half of the book-- so it's
like one quarter of the book, middle half, final quarter, of the book-- the middle
half of the book just unconscious on various ships and in various people's
houses. And it's really hard to, like, write a good story from the perspective
of somebody that is unconscious all the time! It just wasn't very compelling or
interesting, and I felt like we lost a lot of the chance to really build up her
character. To further complicate that, at that point, Gerdie is left behind in the
palace thinking that, oh my sister is dead, and my brother that nobody
likes is gonna start taking over the kingdom, but nothing really happened
there either. I thought that they didn't really do a good enough job of
developing the sort of evil brother's character. He just went from being like
someone that everyone kind of knew was evil, but no one really talked about, to
being someone that was like *super* evil. So he just went from a nonentity to
"I'm so cruel it's unbelievable!" as did several of the characters in this book.
Like Wil and Gerdie's father: everyone talks about how he's just sort of
emotionally cold and not really invested in any of his children, except for his
heir, and then he goes on like a rampage killing children. So he goes from not
very interested in his family to "oh my god, he's a monster!" And there are a
couple other characters that do the same thing in this book. It just made the
whole thing not very consistent and not very believable. Another gripe that I had
with this book was... was the sort o
love interest - thing that happens with Wil. I don't really know what I want to
call it, because I'm not even sure if it can be called love! So there's this boy
that she meets while she's like unconscious on the ship or whatever. His
name is Loom, like the sewing loom, and he's with this other girl, and they have
like this child with them, and Will just sort of thinks, oh they're just
people on the ship. I need to get on their ship to help me find the person
that can cure me from my glass Midas touch kind of thing. And there's like...
it's written that there's chemistry between the two, Wil and Loom, but it
doesn't read like that. So the author keeps telling us like Wil feels
attracted to him, but it doesn't come across in the writing. Then afterwards,
as we enter the final act of the book, we find out that Loom and the girl
that he's been with on the ship- the other girl- are actually married to each
other?! But he's been kissing and like flirting with Wil this whole time! His
wife hasn't said anything, and they're also all like 17 years of age or younger.
And the wife already has a kid, and I think it was just it was just too much
happening at once for me to be able to take the love story really seriously at
all, or even care about it. Instead I was just like, what the hell is happening?
Because there's this guy who's 17 years old, who has somehow been busy enough to
have gotten a wife and been married, but neither he nor his wife nor Wil feel
like any compunction about it! I don't know. I feel like if you're going to write a
story about marital infidelity, make sure that the people that are married in your
book aren't literal teenagers. Just a thought.
So this book, I ultimately kind of hate read the last 75 pages of it or so, because I
really just wanted it to be over. I did actually want to finish the book because
I knew I wanted to review it for the channel,
and I didn't feel right reviewing a book that I didn't finish unless it was truly
egregious. But I just, I really wanted to like this book, and I think it had a lot
of promise in the first quarter of the book, but the rest of it just didn't
live up to the expectations that it created for itself. And it certainly
didn't live up to the hype that I've been hearing about it. I've been hearing
about this book all over social media, which is why I really wanted to read it.
I was like, all right, this sounds a little trope-y but whatever, I like tropes
as much as the next person. I love my YA fantasy tropes. Can't say that I
would recommend this one... sorry! All right, that's going to do it for my review of
"The Glass Spare". Comment down below if you have any thoughts about this video, about
the book itself, whether you've read it. Is this going to influence your desire
to read it in any way, shape, or form? Hopefully I'm not treading on
anyone's toes here, but I just wanted to try and review it as honestly as
possible. Go ahead and give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it. Don't forget
to subscribe to my channel. Thank you all for watching, and I'll see you in the
next one. Bye!
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