The Glass Sentence by S. E. Grove: Not My Favorite

The Glass Sentence 

by 

S. E. Grove

Can I just say before I get started that I mostly enjoyed this book! Do you guys ever read a book, finish it, and think ‘yeah that was pretty good’ but then when you wake up the next morning you realize that it had all these little problems with it that are now driving you crazy.  That’s how The Glass Sentence went for me.

The Glass Sentence takes place in a world where time is broken. Several generations ago there was the Great Disruption (which I kept trying to read as ‘the Great Depression’ for some reason) thus all the cities and countries in the world now exist in different times. Mapmaking has become one of the most respected and difficult professions in the whole world. Also exploring but for somehow the two go together. Sophia, the protagonist, is the niece of the greatest cartographer in the world and the daughter of the most directionally challenged explorers in the world apparently. 

They’ve been lost for probably ten years which is probably some sort of record. 

(I lied the record is apparently 75 years)

Anyway Sophia lives with her Uncle Shadrack until he gets kidnapped and . . . well I’m sure you guys know the drill by now. Make some new friends, travel around a bit, some hijinks, accidently save the world.  Here we go again.

Characters

Sophia: She’s not an awful character that’s for sure. But I don’t think she’ll be shooting to the top of the list of my favorite characters anytime soon. She’s more intelligent than the average YA protagonist and was often able to keep my interest but there was one unfortunate comparison that drove me a little crazy. All the characters pointed out how Sophia was ‘very mature’ for her age, and I mean every freaking character. That’s an accusation that has been leveled at me several times in my life (how dare you ask me to grow up) 

so at first I was kind of interested.

But ultimately, I couldn’t see it. Sophia was thirteen and despite popular belief thirteen-year old’s aren’t completely idiotic. I know that the average thirteen-year old doesn’t go on world-saving adventures but in my opinion the suspension of disbelief already extended to a world where time was broken. I think it can stretch far enough for Sophia to be an ordinarily competent kid.

Theo: Theo was probably the character I found the most interesting. He was from a different, more chaotic, time where there was a bunch of lawlessness and a good bit of shooting. Unlike all the other characters who had slightly more lofty motivations for going here or there, Theo was just trying to get home.

Shadrack: oh look an actually responsible adult. What a novelty. Shadrack was kind of awesome I got to admit. Even if he didn’t actually do a lot per se. Still cool though.

Calixta: Totally fabulous pirate Queen who could shoot you in the face while complaining about her squished hat.

Burrs: Calixta’s brother who was basically there to be a sass machine

Veressa: strange Shadrack love interest who had very little to do with the actual plot.

Likes

The premise was amazing: it’s the regular world but time is literally broken! Half of America is stuck in the early 1800’s. parts of Africa and Egypt are in the midst of the pharaohs while Japan is somewhere in the 40^th century. Not going to lie that is all kinds of awesome! Just look at that potential. You could have pharaohs and Victorian ladies and space age heroes all in one book!

Most believable bad guy since IDK Magneto

I actually had a really hard time trying to find a villain to compare her too. There isn’t a whole lot of sympathetic and believable villains in YA which is kind of sad. This lady’s plan made sense (most of the time, it is still YA after all there will be some theatricality) and her motivations were completely understandable. Color me impressed.   

Dislikes

Disclaimer: this is a debut novel. Because of that there were a lot of tiny little mistakes such as strange dialogue or awkward worldbuilding choices. I’m obviously not going to list every single one because ultimately most authors learn to smooth those things out. These complaints here are simply the biggest or the most problematic.

I didn’t click with the characters: yes they were cool. Yes they were pretty unique. But I never quite got to the point where I was concerned about their wellbeing or felt like I knew them from front to back. It resulted in a bit of a disconnect between me and the characters which was very sad.

Why was there such a stink about lying

Theo was pretty good at lying. Which turned out to be a pretty good thing since Sophia’s uncle was being held by some sort of strange cult who seemed able to find them at a moments notice. But this bothered Sophia nearly to craziness for some reason. Supposedly she didn’t like the idea that she couldn’t trust Theo if he was that good at lying but come on lady! If he’d told every random person on the street the truth (like you do) you would have been peeved at him for doing that too.

The first two hundred pages were kind of boring: the beginning was basically a giant political commentary! If I wanted to read a political commentary, I’d get another book recommendation from my literature teacher. 

Look there’s a difference between making a statement in a story and simply shoving your political beliefs in without any cause. Because eventually the political whatever was completely fixed! With absolutely no heroic help I might add. If it was going to be a bigger plot point I would have overlooked it taking up the entire first third of the story. But since it just sort of fizzles out and gets all wrapped up in the epilogue it felt completely contrived and useless.

The ending: Talking about the ending here so Spoilers obviously. The first ending was actually believable. Implying that the world was saved but at great personal cost. Then the epilogue came around where all the emotional scars where just kind of gone? 

(ookay, sure)

I was afraid that this review would be a bit of a downer when it’s not supposed to be. This is the author’s debut novel so there’s going to be some issues and I want to talk about them because they’re issues that a lot of people run into! But I don’t want to give the impression that the book was horrible by any means! It’s not going to be my favorite book ever. But I am curious about where this author will go.