Fable by Adrienne Young

First things first: this was not the book I originally planned to review. I was going to review Rin Chupeco’s The Never Tilting World, which should have a hyphen in the title and I keep accidentally correcting it whenever I type it, but that book was so damn bad I couldn’t make it past page 40. Defeated, I scrolled through the vaunted halls of Libby to find a replacement, and found this book instead. Here’s what it was supposed to be, according to the summary: “a spectacular journey filled with romance, intrigue, and adventure.”

I was promised Magical Nautical Adventures. What I got was THEE most boring book I’ve ever read, and I’m including the cinderblock of a physical chemistry textbook I had to read senior year.

I made it through 64% of this book according to Libby, mostly by audiobook as I’d hoped to listen while doing some monotonous stuff at work, but the book itself was so dull and lifeless that I couldn’t bring myself to even skim through the last third. (Also, if I keep putting off writing this review, our very own Sir Peachy G. Harrison is going to hunt me for sport.) Basically, this girl Fable has been abandoned on an island in this oceany place called the Narrows. I’m not sure why they’re Narrow. There’s probably a map (with no scale bar, I bet!) at the front of the book but as I mostly listened I didn’t see it. It’s never mentioned in the actual book what this area looks like. What makes them the Narrows? There was so little description that I don’t know what the climate is like. Is it cold? Tropical? I have to assume warm and tropical because she mentions parrotfish at one point but—

--Hold on I’m getting sidetracked into the complaints already. Anyway this girl’s been living all by her lonesome on this island full of criminals or whatever making a living for herself by diving for gemstones (??? Not how geology works) and selling them to traders. Because she has to make enough money to get off the island and prove to her dad, who abandoned her there, that she could survive. Like…ok. Fine. She manages to get off the island with the help of this trader West, who’s been the guy buying most of her gems. (Why are there so many random pretty gemstones just lying about the bottom of the ocean? Did someone spill a massive jewelry box?) There’s some contrived conflict with the rest of the crew, she finds out that this West guy is actually working for her dad’s trading company, runs into a rival trading company guy……….and NONE of this has any sense of like, urgency or danger or intrigue because this author employs the good ol’ trendy move of Telling Not Showing. EVERYTHING that happens in this book is told to us, so none of it has any impact at all on the reader.

For example: we are told, a couple of times, that her mom died in a storm and that her dad abandoned her on the island afterwards. THEN: there is an entire chapter devoted to the flashback of this happening, almost halfway into the book. It does not carry any emotional weight because the author has told us straight up that all of this happened earlier on. And basically everything in the book is like this. Of course, none of the characters have any personality to speak of, and as I’ve already complained, the setting makes middle-school drama class productions look lavish and detailed in comparison. This book is a whole lot of NOTHING.

I will give the author credit for two things: One, her prose—while duller than many of my textbooks—is at least grammatically correct, which is more than I can say for a lot of her contemporaries (DAMN my standards are low). Two, she clearly did some research about boats. If nothing else, she at least opened a Wikipedia page and read it, which, again, is more than I can say for most current YA fantasy authors.

Now for a really specific gripe. The booze the seafarers in this book drink is called “rye” for some reason. It’s pretty much a stand-in for the rum or whiskey you’d normally see in a sea-based adventure. For the life of me I cannot figure out why the author used the real name of a real grain which is already used in real life to make real alcoholic drinks. And ANOTHER THING…at one point someone is mentioned as smoking a pipe of “mullein” which is, again, a REAL plant in the REAL world (it’s got fuzzy soft leaves and grows tall stalks that, when dry, are really good for playing pretend swordfights and hitting your brother). But definitely not something people smoke. I mean I guess you could if you were really determined. You could also smoke dead leaves off the ground if you wanted to. I wouldn’t recommend it. But anyway. It’s a bizarre choice to use real-world words for other things in your fantasy world.

RATING: 0 out of 5 drunken sailors

If you would like to read a book with more chemistry between the characters, may I suggest Physical Chemistry: A Modern Approach by McQuarrie and Simon...just kidding don't read that unless you're really into quantum mechanics. If you want to read an ocean-based adventure that involves diving, but also a richly imagined setting and characters who are three-dimensional and have personalities, I recommend Deeplight by Frances Hardinge.