Official Review: The Forest's Edge

[RussetDivinity]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Forest´s edge" by Ines Galiano.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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The city of Civis, tucked safely away in a system of caves, is a bastion of civilization, pitted against the cannibals who live in the greenhouses of Silva. In exchange for peace, the people of Civis would send out their elderly to be eaten by the people of Silva; Silva would also send fruit to Civis, as it’s rather difficult to have any sort of meaningful agriculture when you’re surrounded by rock and technology.

This is what the people of Civis have always been taught, and since this lesson forms the first chapter of Ines Galiano’s The Forest’s Edge, it’s fairly easy to tell that it’s not entirely the truth. While this book may not have the sort of urban setting that’s easy to connect to our own world (even if no specific names are ever mentioned), it’s still very much in the style of a YA dystopia, and it has all the requisite tropes, especially the people content to live in a system that to our eyes is painfully broken and the youthful protagonists who find a way to escape and change everything.

What interested me most about this novel was the relationship between the two protagonists, Lerdre and Vogel. Rather than being simply friends or even love interests straight from the start, the two of them had a mentor/student relationship, with Lerdre guiding Vogel into how to be a proper citizen of Civis. The fact that it was the woman of the pair doing the mentoring interested me still more, and when the two of them began having similar dreams (dreaming being something strongly discouraged by Civis), I liked how the relationship began to shift. As long as they were in Civis, Lerdre was the one in charge and the one who was able to figure out what they ought to do next. As they began trying to work against the system where they had grown up in an attempt to find the truth about their dreams, however, Vogel became more sure of himself and took more of a leadership role, changing the dynamic in a way that wouldn’t have worked if the two of them had been equals from the start.

I did have my problems with the book, however, though for the most part they weren’t because it felt like a YA dystopia. Those are my guilty pleasure, after all, so I could hardly complain about reading one. The trouble with this one was that it felt rather too formulaic. While the formula of a YA dystopia is part of what I enjoy, I also like seeing how the author makes variations on the basics. While Galiano does create a world that is fascinating in its novelty, she doesn’t spend enough time introducing us to the world and to the people in it before launching us into the action. The novel is barely over one hundred pages, and while I don’t want to read a behemoth, there simply isn’t enough space in one hundred pages to deliver a fully-formed world, fleshed out and dynamic characters, and a novel-length plot. The action felt rushed, especially as the novel neared the end, and by the last third I couldn’t comprehend why the characters were doing what they did.

In short, while I was drawn in to the world that Galiano created and enjoyed the plot of the book overall, the actual reading experience wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as I had hoped it would be. If the author had taken a little more time to flesh out her world and characters, this book would have easily gotten three stars (maybe four, if she did really well at building the world and I gave into my bias for YA dystopias), but as it is, I can only give it 2 out of 4 stars.

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The Forest´s edge
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[LivreAmour217]

Thank you for your thoughtful and well written review. It's a shame there isn't more detail, as well-developed characters are usually what make dystopian stories so engaging (otherwise we might just get depressed reading them!)