Review on JK Rowling's THE ICKABOG

I want to make it very clear that I did not go into The Ickabog with the expectation that JK Rowling had put out the next best thing since the Harry Potter series. I'm sure she's under a lot of pressure to continue putting out novels in the same vein as her other work; she's set a high bar for herself. But I didn't really expect this to be anything like Harry Potter.

I did have rather high expectations for the writing itself, however. I think JK Rowling is a great writer: she crafts masterful plots and subplots; her characters possess complexity and exhibit development throughout a story. Naturally, I looked forward to experiencing this same high quality of writing with The Ickabog. I was...slightly disappointed.

(I'm aware that this book received mixed reviews, even from people who hadn't read it (which is...irresponsible on their part). Apparently JK Rowling is fairly controversial right now. Frankly, I think that's stupid--I read her books because she's a good writer and they're entertaining, not because I agree with her every political/religious/personal opinion. If we treated all novels like that--analyzing every one of the author's views, rejecting the literature if our opinions don't agree--we wouldn't allow ourselves to read most things.)

Here's the gist:

The kingdom of Cornucopia is ruled by King Fred the Fearless. Fred is an idiot--when the opportunity arrises, his friend Lord Spittleworth promotes himself to Chief Advisor and proceeds to slowly, carefully, take control of the kingdom. Rumor of the fearsome Ickabog has begun to spread from the northern Marshlands, providing the perfect excuse for Spittleworth to put the kingdom into a state of emergency. Though he does not believe in the monster's existence, Spittleworth claims he will do all that is necessary to protect the people from the Ickabog. Behind the king's back, Spittleworth raises taxes (for his Ickabog Defense Brigade) and enacts unjust laws; if anyone questions his methods, they are imprisoned as traitors to the throne. If anyone dares to question Spittleworth or the king, the Ickabog conveniently attacks their home and kills their family.

And that's pretty much it.

POSITIVES: The Ickabog is a commentary on government, media, willful ignorance, etc. It's borderline apocalyptic, illustrating the nefarious lengths to which a ruling body may go before the people fight back, or even simply take notice and speak up. There is value there; this novel has its place. The world-building is interesting, sort of a mix between Alice in Wonderland and Christopher Healy's Hero's Guide series.

NEGATIVES: How age-appropriate is it, really? Because while The Ickabog is written in a style suited for very young audiences, and is in fact illustrated by artists whose ages range from 8-13 thereabouts, there is some dark subject matter in this book. Whole families are murdered, children are sold to abusive orphanages, and then we get detailed descriptions of how the graveyard out back of the orphanage is growing rapidly as the orphans starve to death.

(As I've said before: in my family, violence in books isn't really an issue; if my younger siblings have seen the LOTR movies and Pirates of the Caribbean, they can probably read Gregor the Overlander just fine. I would have no issue handing this book to a sibling around the age of eight or nine. But I think parents need to be aware that there's some darker stuff in this story than they might have anticipated.)

The characters were boring and two-dimensional. Young readers are supposed to relate with the characters of Bert and Daisy, but we receive very little depth or development from either of them; they aren't terrible, but they aren't extraordinary either. Bert says some pretty hecking sexist stuff and somehow gets away with it. I think JK was trying to do something there with Lady Eslanda, but it hit a dead end and didn't really go anywhere.

To sum it up: I think The Ickabog is set up to be a whimsical story containing some important messages. In the very beginning, we get a few chapters of hijinks in the kingdom, details about what each of these quaint little towns produces, almost-amusing jokes. Unfortunately, the darkness and technicalities of government corruption completely blot out any hope this book had for being a magical/whimsical adventure. Maybe JK intended for it to be that way, I don't know--I just think there's something distinctly off about how the themes, age category, and plot don't quite match up. I'm not sure I can properly put it into words, either. I hate to flat-out call a book boring (because I've read some truly boring books, and by comparison this read was a thrill) but reading The Ickabog was the equivalent of setting out on a fantastically exciting (and perhaps over-hyped) road-trip, starting off strong with lots of energy, and then proceeding on flat, featureless terrain for the next eight hours, while listening to a lot of particularly bad synthesized jazz, and possibly your mother sobbing in the front seat. The road-trip certainly gets you from point A to point B, and maybe we learned something along the way, but the whole thing could have been orchestrated much better.

Would I recommend it? Sure. Why not. It isn't excellent, but it isn't bad either--it's sort of in the middling range of quality, originality, and age-appropriateness. Tepid. My little brother (13) read it before I did, and his review could be summed up in a simple "Meh".

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For those of you following my Goodreads account, you may have noticed that I'm flip-flopping between adult/nonfiction/children's books on the regular. I have quite a stack of to-read books piling up, so I'm working my way through that and peppering in all the MG/YA novels that I can. Currently working my way through Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. I'll likely jump back into Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle series after that.

If you've been tuned-in to the drama: yeah, I sent out all those query letters, and I only got a few rejection letters--radio silence from the other agencies, which isn't a good sign. While querying for my MG time-travel novel, I distracted myself by writing a story about the Italian-American mob in NYC. It started as a joke because of my family's Sicilian/New Orleans mafia history, but then it became not a joke, and I'm currently editing that monstrosity of a manuscript. Depending on how I'm feeling, I might put a hold on the MG novel and start pushing for this one. We'll see.

Summer semester has started, so here goes senior year--very ready to leave the dumpster fire that is the school system far behind me. I'm going to try to keep up with my reading and update the blog regularly, but I feel like I've said that before and then gone silent for three months. Again: we'll see.

P.S. I've been getting hate-mail? All I ask is that, if you are going to tell me to kill myself, please at least use proper punctuation. Cheers!