Ever

I really wanted to like this book because I love Gail Carson Levine, but I was unimpressed.

Ever felt like Levine was mashing a whole bunch of myths together. There were Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greek myths which were shoved into one book. The whole “hero’s journey” and the characters being tested along the way just felt so contrived to me.

It also didn’t help that I didn’t really like any of the characters. They were flat, uninteresting, and not compelling in the least. Olus is a god of the wind, which I thought would be really cool because we were going to see some epic uses of his wind power, right? Wrong, instead he goes to live on earth and is a shepherd. Then falls in love with a neighbor’s daughter. Boring.

Then with Kezie’s character I felt like Levine was trying to push some “deep” thinking into the story by having Kezie discover that the one god she believes in is not the only god as she believes. I have no problem with the whole all-god vs the Christian God parallels, I just have an issue with Levine trying to make this middle school book “deep”…because she fails. The story is too light and fluffy for anything of substance.

Honestly I think I am 70% disappointed because I loved Ella Enchanted and The Two Princesses of Bamarre. So this book only gets two stars. I did not hate it, but I certainly did not like it.