At last!
It is an entertaining book, nice and very fantastic, with its contrasts, its topics and its topic breakups.
Some point in the first half it felt somewhat tiring. I can´t say whether due to the book itself (writing, English, plots ...) or just myself. Maybe it was with all this Michael and Howl´s crushes and flirting.
In general I found the writing very easy going, free-flowing but some repetition I would suggest to watch and manage. The tone is a tale tone but it does not follow the tale telling pattern. The characters are way more worked out than in a tale, actually they are quite well defined with their light and their shadows all different from each others. I would expected for them to be more plain in a tale (but tales is not my usual reading, so I am not to tell, I guess).
The main plot is simplistic on its own, but it grows in a mess of secondary plots where, while the reader is never allowed to forget (author´s continuous reminders), they are forced to dive in all these other little plots that come up.
The ending resolves all the misteries but still... it leaves a taste of "need more", are we going to read the next one?
Honestly, I am not sure I want to keep going with this soon. But in time,
sure, why not?
I did not like the fact that Sophie spends most of her time doing granny´s job. I thought it might be because she is taking such roll since she looks like a granny. But... the author presents all these cooking, sewing, washing as naturally coming to her to do. As making her useful by being the perfect wife? At least she is definitely not the quiet, obedient girl type but a curious, stubborn meddler.
Mentioning wifes, I have to say that I did not get bored by the "romantic" stuff. It is all so bathed in humour that is just OK. Also, I confess that the author got me out of the topic,
I totally shipped Sophie and Howl, but it became so irrelevant that I forgot! until it was relevant again, of course |
I did not feel "well, all that... only to get to this?" as usual.
I got lost at some point by the end when the Witch says
"Then the King would not let Prince Justin follow Suliman for months, and when he did follow, the silly fool went up north somewhere for some reason, and I had to use all my arts to get him here."
In my mind, Suliman was sent by the King to find the Prince and this Howl did not like.
Did I miss a kind of Suliman goes, Justin follows, Justin gets caught, Suliman comes back, King sends Suliman to find Justin??? |
I did enjoy the reading with all its little, not a lot cons. For children I think it is a 10.