The pundits say that the opening of a book is the most important part to
captivate the reader, and I suppose it’s just as important as a way of
losing the reader, too. So it is with this book. I had only got to page 2
and I was floored by a simple puzzle. Our heroine receives a letter
which contains six hangman puzzles, which she and her sister proceed to
solve in no time - all by themselves. Forgive me for being stupid, but
isn't hangman a game where both sides, originator and guesser, have to
participate? It's not like a cryptic crossword puzzle, where the whole
point is to deduce the answer by yourself.
So that set me off on
the wrong foot straight away. Then there were a bunch of new characters
introduced, a lot of brand-name dropping (do we need to know the heroine
has a Gateway computer?) and then more puzzles... And I couldn't get
interested because half my mind was still trying to get past the hangman
incident. Now maybe there’s some ingenious way to play a one-sided game
that I don’t know about, and if someone explains it to me I’ll give
this book another go, but for now it’s just too off-putting for me to
concentrate on the rest of it. Lots of people seem to like this, so I
guess it’s just me. One star for a DNF.
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