Brief Review: Storybound

Storybound

by Marissa Burt
Book 1 of Storybound

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  3.0 Stars

In the land of Story, children go to school to learn to be characters: a perfect Hero, a trusty Sidekick, even the most dastardly Villain. They take classes on Outdoor Experiential Questing and Backstory, while adults search for full-time character work in stories written just for them.

In our world, twelve-year-old Una Fairchild has always felt invisible. But all that changes when she stumbles upon a mysterious book buried deep in the basement of her school library, opens the cover, and suddenly finds herself transported to the magical land of Story.

But Story is not a perfect fairy tale. Una’s new friend Peter warns her about the grave danger she could face if anyone discovers her true identity. The devious Tale Keeper watches her every move. And there are whispers of a deadly secret that seems to revolve around Una herself....

It was the premise of the story plot that got me interested in the first place, and I have to admit that the build up was doing a pretty good job setting up the world and the conflict. However, halfway into the story, it just felt like a chore to read when the conflict continued to be "discussed" rather than progressed on.

I admire that there is a strong female heroine in this story, but I feel like Una Fairchild fit into the world too easily after being transported from the world of Readers. She almost instantly began to behave the same way that all the "characters" of Story behaved and you couldn't even really tell that she hadn't been a part of Story in the beginning. Nothing seemed entirely strange to her and she readily accepted each and every new strange occurrence. Maybe it was the fact that she was still young and open-minded, or maybe it had to do with the ultimate reason why she had been "Written In" to Story in the first place, but never had this issue been brought up about how easily she fit into Story.

The characters ran a bit flat and I found that aside from that mysterious conflict going on from Story's history, I didn't really care what happened to the main characters at all. Peter Merriweather was an admirable main male lead as well, except that for a young kid who is afraid of failing his practical exams, and who came from a good and wholesome, traditional Hero family, he seemed to have no problems bending rules, skipping classes, and getting into trouble.

It seemed as if each character was just "playing a role" rather than coming to life as their own character.


Final Thoughts:
I plan on reading the next book, but I'm not really anticipating it too much. It's one of those, "I'll read it when I see it next, or whenever I have time" types of things.

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This review was originally posted at Goodreads in May 2012.

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