“Color was life. Color was everything. Color, you see, was the universal sign of magic.”
Furthermore, by Tahereh Mafi, is a beautiful book, bursting with colors. My rating for this book is 4.5/5.
The main character Alice, is on a journey to find her father. While on this quest, she ventures into Furthermore, which has a different magical ruling system compared to her own town. Furthermore lurks with dangers around every corner and an interesting system where they can only travel by day and where people wish to eat them because of their magic. Few spoilers ahead, beware.
The novel is in the third person perspective, which can be annoying when the book mentions ‘Alice’ or ‘Mother’ every single sentence. Once we started our adventure, I fell in love with the narration of the book, but did knock points off because of this. There were many aspects that were similar, in my opinion, to the Hunger Games (Had a similar reaping, uncaring mother, presented talents to others, etc.) and had a world that had no rules. Because this system had no rules except chaos, this allowed for lazy writing to occur that could allow the main characters to get out of problematic situations. Oliver could just jump up into the clouds, or pull out a transporter to get them from one place to another.
SPOILERRRRRRRRRR
My most hated part of the novel, that really made me question giving it 5 stars was the ending. She finally finds her father, by a mere miracle, even though all of Furthermore knew she was there to capture her ‘enemy’ father. After she finds him, no one captures her, they just simply return to Ferenwood and everything is as it should be. Completely frustrating and another example of lazy writing.
Alice, also has a talent, even though we do not know about this until halfway through the book, in another lazy attempt to just get the topic out of the way and available for the user. To better present this, I would have liked to see subtle hints to her past that linked her power with changing color, instead of keeping this a secret to make up for the fact that her mother hates her.
Although there were major issues with the book, I really got involved and were captured by the characters. I cried with them, laughed with them, wanted to knock them on the head for the silly decisions made, and when the story was over, I was sad to see them go. I felt so happy they were happy and it was a bittersweet ending.
The_bookette Reviews 