Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Replacement


I have just finished reading The Replacement by Breena Yovanoff. Overall, it was worth a read, but I think another revision would have made this a much stellar book.

The main character has some major flaws from the beginning which are necessary for the story, but make him come across as weak. His weakness in the face of blood, iron, and other things certainly rings true with mythological demons--which he sort of is--but these weaknesses make him appear to be a poor protagonist. I hoped throughout the story that there would be a time when he would get an elixir from Janice that gave him power over these issues, but that didn't happen.

I liked the relationship between Mackie and his sister Emma. It was endearing, though I felt the blurb about her seeing him in the crib as a known replacement and not truly her brother set an ominous tone that really didn't exist between them. That blurb was featured on the dust jacket and gave me a false impression of their relationship. When Emma goes and gets the restorative for Mackie the first time, it took me a while to understand why she would take on such risks when he was a replacement. However, by the middle of the story and certainly through the ending, their relationship was endearing. And the relationship is echoed in Tate's relationship with her sister Natalie. That was a nice use of motif.

I enjoyed the mythological aspects. Yovanoff did a nice job of mixing ancient ideas with modern developments. For example, the Morrigan from Celtic mythology is one of the characters, but she is now a little girl who is mostly about love. Though the transformation is not fully explained, it is mentioned several times that these creatures have had to adapt over time. Also, the Morrigan's past position as a war monger and warrior taker is summarized in a conversation with Mackie.

What worked: most of the time, Mackie's voice; the use of Mackie as a sacrifice; the development of Mackie into a person who is sympathetic to the creatures of the House of Mayhem, but who still longs to be a human being; the use of music as a means of appeasement of the masses and Mackie's misuse of sad music; the sibling relationships I mentioned above; the use of minor characters to develop the main plot; and the overall creepiness factor. Yikes, some parts were frightening.

What did not work: the first 100 pages needed to be trimmed quite a bit as the story took far too long to get going; Alice's interest in Mackie; some elements were repeated too frequently; character physical descriptions always went on too long; some of the setting descriptions seemed out of place and too long; the revenant was never taken in by the House of Mayhem like she should have been -- that part was seemingly forgotten; and the characters sat too long at the graveyard when they dug up the revenant.

Overall, I'm glad they've decided to make this into a movie. I hope that Ms. Yovanoff has license over the film so the story retains her intent. I think her overall theme of feeling like a misfit and coming to understand you belong more than you thought you did is timeless. All teens relate to that.

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