The Absolute Book (No.2)

Low Fantasy has never been my favourite genre, but I had high hopes when I began reading The Absolute Book. I had read some of Elizabeth Knox’s horror before, and loved it, so I dug into the book with gusto.

The book follows Taryn Cornick, a successful author troubled by the sudden murder of her sister in her childhood. Soon her new book starts to bring unwanted attention, and then one night, Taryn is dragged through a library doorway... into a different world. She wakes in the Sidhe, a mysterious land of perfect beings, living thanks to a dark secret. She realises that The Firestarter, a box that had survived many historical library fires and a subject of her book, is wanted not only by the Sidhe, but by hell itself, and only Taryn knows how to find it...

While I had high hopes as I began The Absolute Book, I finished the book with a mild sense of disappointment. I had turned the first page, hoping to chew through a good portion of the 640-page book, but after a couple of chapters, I had to stop for the day. The book is filled with long stretches of nothing, with overly detailed descriptions and musings, bringing me back to my attempts at The Lord of the Rings several years ago.

For the first good section of the book, each chapter jumped to a new character’s point of view or just skipped forward ten or so years, making for a confusing jumble with no coherent story. I understand that for such a big book, a lot of scene setting is necessary, but I think Elizabeth Knox could have done a better job of it.

Once Taryn had jumped through her first portal, travelling to the land of the Sidhe, we were immersed in a deep world of politics on a scale of hundreds of years. Maybe if I had gone through The Absolute Book faster, I would have had a better understanding of the intricacies of the Sidhe’s politics, but having taken a long time to get through this behemoth of a book, by the time I got back to it, I had forgotten all of the finer details, most of which felt needless anyway.

Elizabeth Knox used many beautiful passages, helping to pull me into the vibrant world, but she seemed to be tight handed with some other important information. Once, I went through half a chapter wracking my brain to work out why the characters were constantly tripping or falling, when she finally let it be known that it was night time, a piece of information she had kept secret until then.

These issues combined to make a disappointingly average book, with an awful lot of words for not very much action. This happened so much that often, I would reach the end of a page to realise that I had not taken any of it in. That said, to a more patient reader, or someone with more time, this book could be enjoyable.

In summary, Knox’s The Absolute Book was filled with promising ideas, it is a shame they were let down by the two or three hundred pages of needless waffling. I would recommend it to anyone with considerable patience, otherwise, stay away.

- Mattie is 16 and lives in Nelson.