Title: The Diviners
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Little Brown Books (2012)
Genre(s): Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Young Adult Fiction, Steampunk
Length: 578 pages
Synopsis: It's an age of jazz and glitter, movie stars and bootleg liquor. Evie O'Neill of Zenith, Ohio, is determined to make the most of it, but at seventeen, she's long outgrown Zenith's nightlife. She craves the rush and excitement of the big city and when her parents decide to send her to New York City to stay with her uncle, Evie jumps at the chance. Soon she's whirled into the kind of life she's always dreamed about: nights spent dancing in exclusive speakeasies, days shopping and sightseeing with friends. But not everything is as it seems. Everyone has a secret to keep, even Evie herself, but when a string of gruesome murders with ties to the occult rocks the city, she, and her secret, may be the only way to save them all.
My Rating: 4 Stars
My Opinion: Hats off to Libba Bray! She's managed to put together a massively complex book that's clearly only the tip of her creative iceberg. This book is a pop culture collision of everything the self-proclaimed "nerd" demographic will love (and I say that as a self-identified nerd and without an ounce of condescension): magic, monsters, ghosts, demons, cults, mutants, superpowers, con men, showgirls, even a nod at steampunk. With the new film adaptation of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby renewing interest in the Roaring 20's, I think this book has hit the right audience at the right time. The stars are aligned for the next big hit, but I think that something is just the slightest bit amiss.
For me, books seem to come most alive when they are more than the sum of their parts, rather than the sum of more parts. True, this book has everything, but I think that everything was, in this case, a bit too much. The main characters are often driven by the central plot, which is excellent...until the plot finishes before the book does. Many of the characters are merely being set up for the sequel, and though I don't mind loose ends at the end of a book, I am perplexed when characters who seem important never quite interface with the aspects of the text I had thought most important. This is particularly concerning given the plot-based drive of the book's action. I tried re-framing the text under a character-driven lens, but it just doesn't work. There are too many characters so focused on doing so many things that there wasn't space for their development to be the story's central anchor.
Overall, the book works. It's a quick read, cleverly written, well thought out, and meticulously researched, but for me, there's too much material for this one thick tome. There's enough in Bray's imagining to have written series following each of her intriguing characters. Of course, there's always the sequel, Lair of Dreams, which I plan to pick up as soon as it's released (supposedly spring of 2014).
