Meh.

The central idea, the settings and the first few chapters are not bad at all, what with the eerie ash covering everything and the horse and the looming dream/memories, but I stopped believing the whole thing half-way through. The characters are quite bi-dimensional and they do improbable stuff like having long-winded conversations while running around with their knees up to their ears, the Polish boy's speech patterns make me want to gouge my eyes out, and now that I think about it there is a whole lot too much running around, in general, for my taste.

Also, I wasn't at all impressed by the sneaky metafictional nods to the fact that the narrative is heavily plot-driven. I can nearly hear the author thinking "sh*t, I wrote myself into a tragic ending and now I need the cavalry to save the day at the last minute, AGAIN. Shall I rethink my approach to this novel? Nah, let's get the deus ex machina to do my job instead of me, and then I'll make the boy ONCE AGAIN muse on the possibility that this is all a hallucination made up by his brain, BECAUSE THE CAVALRY KEEPS COMING AT THE LAST MOMENT. So maybe the readers will not notice what I have done here. And let's leave the whole mess unsolved once I get to writing the end, because, who cares. I can't be bothered". Seriously, I kept waiting till the end for it to be a major plot twist and... niet. The ending itself would have been decent, if it were not for all the guns appearing in the first act and never ever being given a chance to shoot at the end of the third.

Finally, a question for whom already read this novel: that Terminator guy, was it really necessary, except for creating plot without having to actually write one? Wouldn't have spared us a lot of "this can't be real, it's all too convenient for me" and "oh look I thought you were dead impaled on a metallic leg and instead here you are bruised but fine after losing half your blood"? Are you satisfied with the explanation that nobody really knows anything and who cares, I love y'all anyway and life is beautiful?

All in all, a very good occasion spoilt because of sheer laziness. ( )

Really interesting book, I liked the idea even if the end felt a little nebulous ( )

Along with the Chaos Walking trilogy, this book is now one of my favorite Ness novels. A blend of contemporary and dystopian YA, "More Than This" manages to be both familiar yet fresh and all-together compelling. The main characters were very well fleshed-out and each had distinct voices; they were realistically flawed but likeable, and I found myself quite attached to them!
The narrative jumped back and forth in time, and usually I'm not a huge fan of that, but Ness really made it work here. The timelines felt seamless and I liked seeing the pieces fall into place. Also, there was just enough psychological teasing in here to make "More Than This" surprisingly suspenseful! As the scenes unfolded with The Driver I found myself more and more on the edge of my seat. The Driver is seriously one of the most chillingly alien YA antagonists I've read- loved him!

The only reason I'm docking a star from my rating was for the ending. I saw another review call the end too ambiguous, and I agree with that wholly. As a reader I felt like I was missing out of the real climax of the book. Although I don't mind a few loose threads, I think the book could have used a couple more chapters to really wrap things up better.

I would definitely recommend reading this though, no matter what your reading tastes are. Ness is a very talented author and he has yet to disappoint me. Will definitely keep reading his books! :)
( )

Survival

Seth is drowning. Literally. He dies. But then he wakes up in a desolate world, a place that looks similar to where he grew up, but yet it's empty and no one else is around. He thinks he might be in hell. Is he? Or is he somewhere....else?

This has an apocalyptic vibe, at least initially. Then it turns more sci-fi. And then it's also got a philosophical theme going on. I'm honestly not sure how I felt about this one. It was depressing, but hopeful. But more than anything, I felt like it left more questions than answers. Sometimes that's a good thing, but I think in this case I needed a little more closure than I got. ( )