Book Review: The Call

 

The Call

Peadar O'Guilin

Overall: 3/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 4/5

Attention Grabbing: 4/5

The Call is a book about the fae, but a very different book than what I think is mainstream for the fae right now. About twenty years ago the barrier between our world and the fae thinned a bit, and the fae were able to initiate the Call. The Call takes everyone from 13-18 but usually closer to 13. They take them for 24 hours in the fae world and 3 minutes in the human world. Most don't survive the night, and all that do come back changed. To try to save more of the population, survival schools were created to train and toughen the kids. 

Different children react to these circumstances in different ways and through different POVs in the book. Some are hopeless, some are cruel, and some are fueled by that desire to prove everyone wrong. It's a pretty interesting view into a crazy situation that I thought was much better for the human emotions than any of the weird fantasy dystopian elements. Those I found could have been more fleshed out, I had a hard time believing some of the conclusions that had been drawn by it all. 

Overall though I thought it was super entertaining and definitely kept me on the edge of my seat. I think that the ages of the protagonists didn't quite make sense to me at the end, but dystopian books can probably get away with that a lot more than others. The ending was not as dramatic as I would have liked either, but the rest of the book compensated for that.