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Less than Jake
Fiction
April 23, 2015
268
Three stories, separated by five thousand years, united by one deadly secret: Somewhere, sometime, the stone is waiting. Trespass combines gritty, edgy modern-day action with a thrilling adventure across time. Discovered over 5,000 years ago, the Darkeningstone affects everyone who finds it. Jake was too smart to believe the rumours about Scaderstone Pit, but now he's in more danger than he could ever have imagined. In 1939, as World War II looms, the lives of two men will be changed forever. Over 5,000 years ago, a hermit will keep the stone a secret. But someone is watching him - someone with murder in his heart. When it finds you, what will you see when you look into The Darkeningstone?
Trespass: Lots of potential that doesn’t quite deliver.
So, before I start this review properly I should mention that I loved the idea of the story, and so did a few of my friends when I told them about it in the pub. A mysterious threat? Historical flashbacks?
The potential for death and destruction? A YA book that doesn’t involve some sort of awkward love triangle? Count me in! (I also loved that the book was set in England- you don’t see a lot of that with this genre!)
However…
(cue ominous music)
It just didn’t quite do it for me and I was kind of disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, there were parts of it that I did enjoy, I really loved the flashback chapters. The chapters revolving around Burlic and Waeccan are great.
It’s just Jake I had a problem with.
Yeah, the main character. The problem with Jake is that he is a teenage boy. Credit to Campling, Jake is written how a teenage boy would talk/write/think, but I think that’s where the problem lies. With a story line that has this much potential, I feel like it was wasted seeing it through the eyes of a typically bullied teenage boy with anger issues. He was frustrating, he was whiney and he was quite hard to read at times.
Personally, i feel like this book should have taken on a more adult approach than a YA one (i’m not even sure it fits under the YA genre, even the author doesn’t know!). The story would have been brilliant if Campling had really explored the darker side of the stone and made the book and it’s characters really deadly. It could have been taken much further than it was and it just kind of fell a bit flat.
Can we also just talk about the ending? (It’s a rhetorical question, i’m going to talk about the ending.) There wasn’t one. It was a cliffhanger. I despise cliffhangers, they always feel like a drastic ploy to get the reader to buy the second book so they have the answers to what happened in book one. I have no blumming idea what happend in book one, I didn’t get any answers! And if I want the answers, I need book two (and I presume book three too).
Sure, I get that you need the story to continue to the second book, but I would have liked to have some smaller story arcs wrapped up in book one so actually feels like a completed book.
Maybe if I had been a bit younger when I read this book I would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did, maybe I wouldn’t have spent so much time tutting and muttering ‘youths’ under my breath in that typically English way whenever Jakes chapters started. Maybe I’m just old before my time. At 24.
This book just wasn’t for me, it had it’s redeeming qualities but overall I don’t think i would read it again. However, this book does have some good reviews on Amazon and Goodreads so if you’re intrigued, you should check it out. (It’s free on Kindle unlimited!)
Either way, Mikey Campling, if you happen to be reading this and decide to make a version that only centres on Waeccans story line….You know where to find me.
Brilliant review, I was actually thinking of reading this but now I don’t think I will. I cannot stand a whiney main character.
They annoy the hell out of me too =/