Daily Archives: September 3, 2010

The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith

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Short Summary:

Sixteen-year-old Jack gets drunk and is in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is kidnapped. He escapes, narrowly. The only person he tells is his best friend, Conner. When they arrive in London as planned for summer break, a stranger hands Jack a pair of glasses. Through the lenses, he sees another world called Marbury.
There is war in Marbury. It is a desolate and murderous place where Jack is responsible for the survival of two younger boys. Conner is there, too. But he’s trying to kill them.
Meanwhile, Jack is falling in love with an English girl, and afraid he’s losing his mind.
Conner tells Jack it’s going to be okay.
But it’s not

My Review:

Is this supposed to be a Young Adult title? Because I cannot imagine handing it to any teenager that I know.

Did you see the movie Avatar? Well.. that’s a starting point for what this book is like. Add in massive amounts of profanity, an attempted rape, dismembered corpses and cannibalism and you’ll start to get a bit more of the picture.

Jack lives in two worlds. He lives in ours and he lives in a place called Marbury. Marbury is… not pleasant.

I’ll be honest with you, this book made me sick at times. The premise was fascinating enough to keep me reading but really, this is a messed up book. It may just be because it has more of a horror element to it and I’m not a big fan of horror but, from the cover and description, I was thinking it would be a more sci-fi sort of book.

I’ve had some pretty nasty, graphic dreams too while reading this story. I don’t want to say it’s a bad book, because it isn’t. It’s really well done for what it is and I think older teenage boys would really dig the story.

Ugh. It’s making me want to take a shower though. Read at your own risk!

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