WondLa = Wonderful?
Meh, not so much.
I had a really hard time rating this book about Eva Nine, possibly the last human girl alive in an alien world.
There were a lot of things I really enjoyed about The Search For WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi: the main character, Eva, is very engaging, as is her "Muther" robot and many of the creatures she meets on her quest to find other humans and to escape the evil huntsman, Beesteel.
The story started as strong as any I've ever read. I recall--explicitly--saying out-loud, "Oh, yay! It's going to be good!" after reading the first chapter. Even through the first hundred pages of character introduction and world building, I was seriously feeling the five stars.
And then, the "middle".
YAWN.
Two hundred pages of repetitive world-building. I found myself asking, "Okay...is something, anything significant going to happen any time soon?
And then, when the odd thing did, it was over so fast and so anti-climactic (Oh, look! She escaped Beesteel, again....), that frankly, I started getting annoyed.
Fortunately, I kept at it and was rewarded with a satisfactory ending. Over-all, though, I feel this book held such great promise but for me, was cumulatively underwhelming.
I give the first 100 pages five stars, the next 200 pages, 2 stars, and the final 100 pages, 4 stars. Add to that a hearty five stars for the illustrations (I loved those--all of them), and we eek out a weak 3 stars on the whole.
