I came across a book recently which was highly recommended and highly anticipated to be the next Harry Potter. So, obviously, I had to give it a try. The book series is called ‘Nevermoor’ written by an Australian author ‘Jessica Townsend’. Nevermoor series has 2 books published to date, with the third one due in October. The first book in the series is the author’s debut novel titled “Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow”. The book talks about the journey of a 10-year-old cursed girl, who is despised by his own family due to the burden she brings upon them because of a curse. The girl is fated to die on her 11th birthday. But something happens before her birthday and she finds herself cheating death with the help of her later patron Jupiter North and landing into a whole new world….. City of ‘Nevermoor’, where she enters the trials to become a member of an esteemed society called: 'Wunderous Society'. The book is definitely a great read for all age bars. This is the kind of book that can be enjoyed by both children and adults. The storytelling style of Jessica is admirable. But…..… Yes, there are some buts. But before I start, there’s 1 question that needs to be answered: Is this the next Harry Potter? The answer is: NO! The book is nowhere to be compared with the Harry Potter series. Apart from the huge difference in the storyline for both the series, I would still say the magical world created by J.K. Rowling can’t be easily replaced. Many people gave the same opinion due to the nostalgia of first picking up the ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone’. But I read the book last month for the first time (I know I am a bit late but what can you do), so I don’t even fall into that category. The reason is simple, the writing style and the imagination of J.K. Rowling cannot be beaten off yet.! She is known not only for the mysterious magical world she created but her storytelling style, her way of binding the story together, her extraordinary imagination, and whatnot. Jessica Townsend did use some magical elements in her story but nothing that is as imaginative as J.K. Rowling.
Now to review the book, I am going to talk mainly about 2 things: The characters and the plot.
Characters
First, let’s first talk about the different characters in the book. To start with the main character ‘Morrigan Crow’, I would, unfortunately, have to say that she isn’t my favorite character in the book. She is supposedly portrayed as a strong and brave girl, who overcomes the fear of her fate and yet she fails to do it many times. Although she has shown quick thinking and bravery a lot of times, she is also shown to fear her destiny for even the smallest events. For the smallest incident in her life, she would immediately assume she would be thrown back to her hometown and would die. Yes, this is the journey she had to take from the very start of the series, and it is the basis of the storyline, but she should overcome this as the story progressed, which unfortunately she didn’t. She accepted to go back to save Jupiter somewhere between the story, but later she again started going on and about the fact that since she wouldn’t be accepted at the wundrous society, she will be taken back to her home where she would be killed by The Hunt of Smoke and Shadows. The character didn’t do much in the book according to me, and most of the things were handed to her hand instead(like the fact that Ezra Squall is The Wundersmith was told to her by another character and the photo of Ezra squall was handed to her where she discovered that Mr. Jones is Wundersmith). Things happened around her instead of her following some adventure to disclose a mystery. She has been portrayed as a girl who gets annoyed very easily and throws remarks at people whenever she can. She supposedly carries something dark inside, yet instead of the dark, she does not show any signs of darkness and is only displayed as a cursed child who doesn’t know why things go bad around her.
On the contrary, I liked the character of Hawthorne which was portrayed as a funny yet extremely talented guy. It’s a shame he wasn’t given more focus in the book, and only played a side-role.
The character of Cadence was a good one too. Her journey was more prominent in the book than Morrigan herself, where she was shown as a side-character who wasn’t too important to the storyline at the start, who would grow up to become an extraordinary character by the end.
The character of Jupiter was okay enough too. He is pictured as a calm brave man who is caring and is very secretive. I found his character somewhere close to Dumbeldore, as he too would keep everything a secret. I felt at times that this wasn’t required for the storyline. Whenever he was asked anything, he would run away from the scene, most of the time. Although he was one of the main characters, it didn’t feel like that in the story.
Story Plot
Next, talking about the storyline, I felt that there was unnecessary suspense created until the very end. Most of the suspense was kept until the very last. For every small mystery, the reader is left with the question: 'Why did this happen?' And the answer couldn’t be found until you reach the end and then everything is revealed altogether at once. I usually like to read a book that slowly reveals the mystery, unfolding it one by one so even the reader could try to reach the conclusion and yet be blown away by the actual plot. Also, whenever an event important for the final plot happened, the event wasn’t even highlighted much and was shrugged off too sudden to give any hint that this might be something important later. Although the reader could understand that this is something important for the story, you would keep wondering why it wasn’t focused at all. An example could be when Morrigan remembered Cadence and Hawthorne kept saying that he doesn’t know who she was talking about, Morrigan didn’t even give it much thought that it’s weird and that something is not right. Instead, she just moved on too quickly to something else. Instead of focusing more on these events and even the main trials she entered, we can see that too much focus was given on some unnecessary things like a chandelier, smoking rooms, side characters, and small events. The final plot of the book was interesting though. The story paced itself up at the very end and soon you would feel hooked on the final few chapters. The reasoning for all the events was explained which would grab your attention and everything would then make sense. But then again, there was too much left for the very end which was not even connected and could have been revealed a little earlier.
Overall, I would say the book is an average to above-average read for me and as I have already bought the second book in the series, I will surely give it a go.
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