Danielle's Reviews > Monsters of Men

The trilogy progressively got worse, and this final installment was just plain tedious. The one star was more an award to myself for getting through it.

The dialogue is extremely repetitive. The length of the novel basically consists of "Viola" "Todd" "Viola?" "Todd!" "Viola!" "Todd?"



"VIOLA!!!"


All of which is emphasised in a variety of fonts, italics and bolded? text. I wager the book could've been halved in size if they'd omitted the constant declarations of each other's name.

Secondly, in the previous installment, The Ask and The Answer, Todd was the only character I'd grown wary of. This book however endeavours to make every single character insufferable - to the point where death is wished upon each and every one of them. Todd -I still don't understand why he was supposed to be so important, all he could do was projectile the words (direct quote) "VIOLA!!!!!!!!!!!" at people and mind control them into fetching his horse more water whilst feeling vaguely (but not really) guilty about it. He was also excruciatingly insistent on threatening people's lives if they dared hurt Viola which everyone knew he was incapable of carrying through with anyway "boy who couldn't kill" and all, so the effect was just repetitive and unnecessary. This phrase also had a regular appearance "if you ever hurt her, if you even touch her, I'LL KILL YOU" (hmmmmm, sure). And where was the retribution for branding all the women and spackle? The lil twerp got no more than a tap on the wrist for his lapse of judgement; meanwhile the women are off losing limbs on a hilltop.

Thirdly, the plot just came across as lazy and so many alternative outcomes that I'd guessed to possible twists were (in my opinion) a lot better than what actually happened. For example, the Mayor should have ended on a high in all his evil mass manipulator glory instead of turning out to be this sniveling wannabe dad - when reading to Todd his "ma's book" he could've completely manipulated the entire situation and read it wording it to his own advantage. Later "VIOLA!!!!!" could have read it and realised this act of evil genius - discovering his true agenda (although the true nature of his character was never really in question except to Todd whom, lets be honest, was beyond thick). Similarly, Mistress Coyle, who'd been mistreated from the get go, should have been given anything but the lousy conclusion that she got and, despite the dramatics of her actions, about three pages later, everyone and their goldfish memory spans seemed to have forgotten she'd existed anyway! Bizarre.

My final qualm with the novel was the dumb ending. Ambiguity was unnecessary - I was quite content with Todd's death. However, after slogging through 600-odd pages, we didn't even get to see a glimpse of the world the convoy would be settling into - instead it was left with everyone wondering whether the war was still rampant (on various hilltops and what have you).

So, all in all I would not, asides from the first book, recommend this trilogy to anyone. It was a dismal execution of what could've been a good idea.