Monday, November 4, 2013

The Darkest Path

The Darkest Path
Jeff Hirsch 
336 pages
Released: September 24, 2013
Publisher: Scholastic
Source: NetGalley
★★☆☆☆


You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Oh, what a bummer.  I absolutely loved The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch, and I thought Magisterium was pretty good, too, so when I saw The Darkest Path on NetGalley I was like, "Hell yeah I want to read that!"  I feel kind of deflated now and this review will probably be short because I hate writing bad reviews.

There's a civil war going on in the United States, or what's left of it anyway, and Callum and his younger brother are in the Glorious Path - a militant religious group slowly taking over the country.  But Cal wants out, so he and his brother set out with a dog named Bear.  His brother returns to the Glorious Path, but Cal continues on... battles, trouble, and convienient help ensue.

The Darkest Path is a boy book.  Now before you get all up in arms about gender-izing books, let me tell you I'm the last person to believe in "boy books" and "girl books."  Books are books if you like them, great, and if you don't, I don't think your gender has much to do with it.  But as I read The Darkest Path, all I could think was that it was a boy book and it's hard to say why specifically.  Perhaps it was the violence or the crummy romance story, but I've enjoyed plenty of other books filled with violence (Quarantine, for example) or crummy romances (hello, Twilight was my first book love).

Let me get off of that topic though and give you some real reasons The Darkest Path didn't do it for me.  The plot didn't hold my attention - that's number one.  I kept putting the book down and picking it up days later.  Number two - it was a bit confusing.  Every time I picked the book back up, I had to remind myself which side was which and who was winning.  And thirdly, the romance.  As I mentioned before, it was pretty crummy and didn't do much for me, which is fine I guess because the romance was the main point of the story.

On the positive side, I do think the book has a serious and important political message.  But I hate talking about politics in public places, so it's up to you to read and figure that one out for yourself.

Augh, I just don't know, but this one gets only two stars, unfortunately.  But if you're a dude, pick this up and give it a try.  Maybe I should make my husband read it and tell me what he thinks...

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