There were parts of this book that I really enjoyed, and parts where I felt the plot really slowed down and suffered from the utter imagination of the setting. Let me explain…
A lot of people love Alice in Wonderland, but I found it hard to get into because the world was so fantastical that there weren’t any stakes. That was the problem I had with the Glass Town Game. The first part of the novel gets to know the Bronte siblings and their life in England, and I utterly adored it. The characters are charming, their grief is realistic and honest, and their minds are delightful. It was lovely.
But then they entered this magical world, very Narnia-esque, and it all fell apart a bit for me. It was SO magical and SO fantastical that it felt like it existed mostly to be lovely and strange, and nothing was actually happening or moving forward. That went on for far more pages than a children’s book should have (it also felt more like a children’s book than I expected), but eventually the children got a goal and things picked back up, and the second half of the book was a marked improvement. By the conclusion I was very glad I didn’t give up, as I almost did near the end of that slump period.
Overall the writing was lovely, the characters were excellent, but the plot was a little too child-focused and wandering for my taste.
