Extra Book: The Wall

Book: The Wall
Author: John Lanchester
Pages: 288

This is my 98th read for the year.

I know, I know - what is with all the "Extra books, off challenge" lately?  Honestly - it isn't on purpose.  I listened to this book, and it was really, really short and for the last few days I have been working out doors and running boring errands, so it came in handy.

This is the story of a soldier named Joseph Kavanagh who is working on the wall on his first tour of duty.  The wall was put in place during "The Change" - rising sea levels are causing havoc.  The wall was put in place to protect coastal England from "The Others" who threaten the land.  If the soliders fail to defend the wall, they risk being put to sea as a punishment.  (one Other in means one Soldier out).

For the most part, nothing happens - he spends his long days sitting in the cold, watching the sea.  But the constant threat of The Others breaching the wall is there, and the elite have warned the soldiers that a big threat is coming.  Everyone needs to be ready.

This book was terrible.  Utterly terrible.  First of all - the person that read it, read it like he was reading a mechanics manual.  No inflection of voice - low, monotone reading.  Just dull.  Second of all - the story when no where.  Truly nowhere.  Nothing happened for 3/4 of this book.  The story was ridiculously slow.  No explanation or back story on how they got there, what caused the wall to finally go in place, who the Others truly are.  I mean - they could have been zombies for all we knew, because they were not explained.

Some reviews said that this was a plus because it left the whole vision up to the readers imagination.  I guess I can appreciate that to a point.  But really to me it just seemed like a cop-out idea.  Like "here is this Wall, here are these Others- I am not going to tell you anything about either - good luck".  

Don't bother with this one.  I should have quit it.  Even the ending did not save the story, as I was hoping.  I kept thinking that it was going to go somewhere.  When in reality - it was just dull.

Stars: 1