The Comic Book War (dununun)

My Review!

     Overview

             The Comic Book War by Jacqueline Guest is a story about how a young boy lives at his home in Canada while his three brothers fight in World War II to defeat that Hitler (this is how Hitler is referred to throughout the story). This young man, named Robert Tourond, is worried sick about his brothers. Coincidentally, Robert is taking a walk when he sees a large flash a distance ahead of him. Instead of running away, Robert feels an internal urge to actually go into the area of danger. He finds out that the flash came from a falling meteorite. He picks up a piece of the meteorite and keeps walking.

         A few days later, he gets a letter from his brother saying that he saw a pretty shooting star a couple weeks ago. Robert thinks that this is some sort of cosmic connection between his brother, and that things will be fine. He also notices that the comic books he loves to read almost completely correspond with what his brothers tell him in their letters back home. Robert is convinced that the comic books and a sliver of meteorite can tell him the future (in my opinion, this is a little bit weak and unoriginal). Of course, things are working great for Robert. His cosmic connection seems to be in check and he knows what his brothers are up to. This is the case until he gets a telegram. The telegram says that his brother is dead. He decides, of course, that his "cosmic connection" is utterly wrong and finds it stupid. That's basically the end of the book.

   

   My Opinions:

         Setting: In my opinion, the setting here wasn't terribly well thought out. it's the obvious choice for the time period it was written in (1943). Canada being a peaceful place, it's a perfect area for brothers to be overseas in Italy fighting to defeat Hitler (sorry, that Hitler). The distance causes tension, fear and chaos among the family, presumably what Jacqueline Guest was aiming for. Even so, relatively weak. I think it would have been better for the brothers to be fighting on their home turf. This would make things a heck of a lot more chaotic. 

         Characters: The characters in this book were actually developed quite well. The character of Robert Tourond was made fairly well, with a distinctive personality and constant traits and thought patterns. All other characters were relatively distant, however, so there's not much to elaborate on other than this; maybe every other character in the book shouldn't have been completely distant.

       

         Plot: A creative, outside-of-the-box plot with a cliche, uninteresting feel to it. The plot is pretty creative; I myself have never seen a plot based on life-or-death situations via comic books and rocks, but nevertheless, it feels like Jacqueline Guest needed a couple cups of coffee to get her going before writing this. I was predominantly uninterested and bored while reading this book.

         

         Voice: The voice in this novel, the voice of Robert Tourond, was conveyed properly and very nicely. I don't have much to say about this because it was in fact very well done. It's not written in any sort of confusing ways, and every scene was consistent and concise. The flow of voice was articulate and easy to read, heightening my experience. Kudos to Jacqueline Guest for being able to portray the voice of a teenage boy (or any teenager, for that matter) so well.

         Theme: The theme of this book was of course the gigantic strain everyone in the world went through to defeat Hitler (oops, that Hitler) in World War II. The theme was nicely thought out, worked, and was very obvious, a quality I find pretty well essential in any book I read (it's good to know what the entire darn thing's about). The war efforts portrayed in the book completely followed the theme, and I couldn't ask for more.

         Overall: I'm going to base this off of what I've reviewed before this. The rating system will be an average of these ratings:

1. Setting: Meh. 6/10. Very mediocre and not particularly creative.
2. Characters: Nicely done, but only one was developed. 8/10.
3. Plot: Creativity turned boring and anticlimactic. 5/10.
4. Theme: Very nice! A flowing, sensible theme with thought put in. 9/10.
5. Voice: Again, great. A very nice job. 10/10.

         FINAL MARK (drumroll please)

7/10:

   

         Yes. I'm giving this book a 7/10, 70%, Level 3, whatever you want to call it. It was a nice book with a fantastic voice if I do say so myself, a great theme and a good character base. The pitfalls that lost this book three of my marks are the plot and the setting. Both of these were relatively sloppy and just not great. It's a shame, because if not for that, this book would have had my support in spades. There are some things I adore and admire about this book, and others that just make me shake my head. Overall, a slightly above average book that certainly caught my eye. I'd recommend this to a friend any day.

So concludes my blog post about The Comic Book War, hope you enjoyed and see you next time!