A Sea of Stars

I absolutely hated this book. I'm not even sure that "hate" describes how I feel.

This is based purely on how I felt reading it and not the writing quality, though that was really rather poor as well.

I suppose that most people were supposed to have this reaction:



and then natter on about how amazing this book is. How the "coming of age" story is so poignant and beautiful. How they wept and then fainted from the overwhelming feelings that they had for Jody. And, of course, how they recommended this book to everyone they knew.

But I hated it.

Really the only looks I had as I read were:













My thoughts were that it would have been a FAR better book if what I wanted to happen would have happened. I wanted little Flag to show up on page 1 (instead of 130) and have rabies, thus infecting Jody and his parents. They die and Flag dies on page 2. The end. That would be a five star version of this book.




It probably didn't help that we were supposed to focus on Jody's nonexistent virtues. Like responsibility and respect. He didn't have either of those. He slacked off, never did his chores and when he did, most likely under pain of death. He treated his parents like crap, except when he wanted something. He is an immature brat. And he is lauded for that?

Then he is told to kill Flag because he couldn't keep Flag from destroying the crops. So Jody kills Flag and runs away from home: moping and being, again, immature. He wanders around and finally returns home after realizing that he can't survive without the resources of his parents.

Yeah, he's a great character who really matured.

I did not cry once over this book. Except perhaps for the welling tears of self-pity and pent-up ire at having to read this book.

Also, this is a 400+ page book. This could easily have been edited to less than 100. It would not affect the story in any way except to improve it. I honestly shudder to think what this looked like before editing...

So if someone asked me if they should read this book: