The Diviners by Libba Bray was an exceptionally tense and scary YA novel that was essentially the story of Evie O’Neill, a young woman from a small town who ended up in the bustle of 1920’s New York, staying with her uncle, who operates the unusual Museum of American Folklore, Superstition and the Occult.
There's a lot still left hanging-the story feels so big I wonder if she'll really be able to finish it in two more volumes-and I wish I didn't have to wait a year or more to see what happens next. And I think it's a testament to Bray's writing skill and characterization that when Theta uses the slang it sounds natural (although she is not a New York native) and when Evie uses it, it sounds forced. When Theta refers to Carl Jung as "that egghead fella" or tells the gang "Let's ankle," these things make me smile. I love the Roaring Twenties setting and how it figures into the characters' lives and dialogue. Much of it takes place inside dreams, something that I normally have a low tolerance for. I can't remember the last time I feared for a character as much as I feared for Henry and Ling in this book. Ling is an excellent addition to the cast, and her budding friendship with Henry was sweet and often hilarious. Speaking of infuriating, here's hoping this stupid love triangle gets resolved early in the next book, and that Mabel finally gets treated better, by both friends and love interests. She's at her most annoying here, and her self-destructive behavior this time around was infuriating. And Henry and Ling took an awfully long time to put the pieces together about Louis and Wei Mae.Įven so, I'm in love with these characters, and the longer I get to spend with them the better. There didn't need to be so many breaks in action to see a character we don't care about get killed by ghosts, for example. There were certainly scenes that could have been cut.
If I hadn't been listening to it, the pacing might have bothered me more.
I loved the way she did Sam's voice and accent. January LaVoy does a wonderful job with a variety of characters, men and women, young and old, with many different accents. The reader ranks among the best I've heard. It's a good follow-up to the first in the series.
I listened to this until the last 60 pages or so, which I polished off when I didn't want to wait until my next work commute to get back to the story.
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