I was very excited by the premise of this book, which sounded like (as the blurb on the back said) The Neverending Story meets Inkheart. In a very meta-fantasy setup, our young heroine is mysteriously transported to a different world, a strange place where stories are created. All of the kids in this world go to school to learn to be character types (the first kids she meets are studying to be a Hero and a Lady). But what is this girl from our world doing in the land of Story? Hold on, friends, for it's going to get very complicated.

A book this long (400 pages) and twisting demands a lot from young readers. We know lots of kids can handle it because we've seen them gobble up enormously long and complicated fantasy books before (in the millions). Unfortunately, though this book feels like it wants to join those ranks, I don't think it has the right stuff.

Long, twisting fantasies are at at their best when the reader feels that I-can't-put-it-down feeling. I had to struggle to keep reading this. Everything just fell flat for me, from the talking cat to the evil Elton to the very vanilla main characters. When I was 100 pages in and still didn't feel the least bit concerned about what was going on, I skipped to the end to try to decide if I should keep going. What I found was clear evidence that this is meant to the be the first in a series. I groaned inwardly and set the book aside.

This just goes to show that a good idea good writing does not always equal a good book. There's some X factor that's missing here. Or maybe the long, complicated juvenile fantasy genre is finally dying a death from a thousand small cuts. You water it down and water it down, and it's just not as special as it once was. (Though, to be fair, I'm certainly over-dramatizing, as I did love last year's [b:The Emerald Atlas|8619814|The Emerald Atlas (The Books of Beginning, #1)|John Stephens|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320406687s/8619814.jpg|13490451].) ( )

In the land of Story, kids go to school to learn to be a brave Hero, a trusty Sidekick, even the most dastardly Villain. They dream of the day when they will live out tales written just for them. In the first book in this series, Una finds herself written into a story which is full of dark secrets. Can she save herself?

"Storybound" is about a girl who finds herself written into a book. Written for the middle grade reader, it is similar to Jasper Fforde's "Jane Eyre" series and also "Inkheart." Una, a 12-year-old girl, finds herself transported to the land of Story, where children go to school to learn how to become characters in fairytale books -- the Hero, Sidekick, Villain or Princess. Una must find a way to get out of the book and back home, before someone discovers her real identity. I enjoyed the story a lot, and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys fractured fairy tales.

Chris K. / Marathon County Public Library
Find this book in our library catalog.

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Una Fairchild is the quintessential outsider. At 12 she is invisible to everyone around her, including her foster mother who would rather talk to her cats than the child in her care. Una spends as much time as possible holed up in the library basement in the same spot. So when she finds a hooded figure in her usual spot and he refuses to acknowledfe her she is greatly upset. She is even more upset when she discovers a mysterious book with her name on it. Even more upsetting than that is discovering herself pulled into the book itself, where she learns that there is a whole other world populated with all the characters that make up all of our stories. But Story is in danger and she might be the only one able to save it.

This is the first book in a series meant for middle readers, between the ages of 9-12. It is an engaging fantasy full of adventure, heroism, and danger that should delight any reader of that age, particularly girls. As an adult I found the story a bit simplistic, though I was still entertained and in many ways see my 12 year old self in Una. I wasn't thrilled with the ending and found that too much was left dangling for my taste. I prefer, even books in a series to have a more pulled together ending and not end with a massive cliffhanger. I am, however, planning to read the next book, if only because of how much I liked Una and curiosity. ( )

Una Fairchild is the quintessential bookish wallflower, until she one day is transported into a book and finds herself at a school in the Land of Story, where characters take classes in Villainy and Questing and tales come to life. Unfortunately, her outsider status puts her into danger - and it's up to her and a friend training to be a Hero, Peter, to find out what's happening in Story before it's too late.

I love meta books. I adore clever nods and winks and bits of satire and the inversion of tropes. And it's clear this book was trying, but it just failed for me.

The beginning introduces us to Una, but only barely - "quintessential" is one way of putting it. "Stereotype" is another. There was an invisible checklist in my head: unique name, check. Odd colored eyes, check. Tragic backstory? Check. Invisible wallflower who loves to read? Check. There's something very perfunctory about it, not to mention the obvious Mary Sueism coming through. The reader never gets a chance to learn anything more about her before she is transported inside of a book.

The writing wasn't impressing me, and it never really got past "passable" for me, but it did show a slight uptick when Una actually made it to Story. Unfortunately, that only made it all the more jarring. There needed to be more build-up and characterization. It felt as if the author wanted to rush through the boring bits as soon as possible. Those boring bits, however, usually serve a purpose.

From here, Una goes from being a stereotype quiet bookworm to being snarky and adventurous. That's the purpose of those boring bits - if she was meant to be like that all along, then perhaps following her around a bit in the "real world" would have been helpful).

Una meets Peter, the other lead character, and finds out that people such as herself - "Written In Characters", or WICs - are not well-liked, to put it mildly. There was a war a long time ago, when the Muses who bound tales and guarded over Story broke their oaths. A Hero character got rid of the Muses and now books are banned. But it turns out the Muses aren't dead, they're all in books that - you know what? This is really confusing. It's also given to you in one big rush, when ideally Una could have slowly started to understand the world herself, rather than an exposition dump. The second problem with this is that ... well, honestly, I had no connection to this world. Una, and by extension the reader, learns all of this fairly early - again, those boring bits where we get to slowly learn the world are fairly important, it turns out.

Burt clearly was pushing for some satirical notes on censorship, tropes, etc., but most of it fell flat because it was too muddled. Satire needs to be sharp and clear for it to work, and some of this felt like a great idea, but just never quite delivered.

There were some parts that worked. The scene in the beginning with Lady Snow unconcernedly filing her nails while Peter fights a dragon is pretty funny, but moments like that were too few and too far between.

I'm a soft touch, however, and I probably still would have given this book three stars if it hadn't been for the ending. My suspicions were aroused when I noticed that I only had about forty pages to go, and things seemed to be heating up rather than wrapping up. A certain wary dread began to build in me. Thirty pages. Twenty. Ten. And finally, the words I hate more than anything else: "To be continued..."

A story is a contained entity. It has a beginning and an end. When I pick up a book, I expect it to be finished. It may have some loose ends, it may leave itself open to a sequel, but the plot that I've been reading for the past two hours better have some sort of resolution - not a cheap trick designed to have readers buy into the sequel. If I like an author, or a story, I will seek out that sequel on my own. Authors who do things like the dreaded, "To Be Continued..." (as if it were some horrible soap opera or the last season of The X-Files) just strike me as not having enough confidence in their own writing to let the reader make up their own mind - except I have. That "ending" annoyed me so much that I have no interest in checking out the sequel.

The jumbled, chaotic mess of a plot, the lack of proper pacing, and the misnomer of an "ending" managed to ruin this book for me. As for the sequel? I'll pass.

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