THE SUPERNATURALIST
By Eoin Colfer
11 GBP(Hardcover)/ 8 USD (Paperback)
On the schedule today is yet another book by Eoin Colfer – the author of, in case you don´t remember him, Artemis Fowl (as you can see on the cover picture above).
Even if I hadn´t completely voluntarily wanted to without any objections, I´d still have to admit my admiration for this book, because they say imitation (in my case, unintentional but terrible plagiarism) is the greatest form of flattery. I wrote the entire first 80 pages of a story, and never once did I realize how insanely close I was leaning to the plot of Eoin Colfer´s novel. I had basically the same characters under different names, doing basically the same things, with basically similar plot twists – and then I decided to reread this one of Colfer´s books, and I was instantly reminded of where all of my oh-so-original ideas actually came from. My story is now officially trashed and given up(but not deleted, mind you. I have it in print).
So with the almost traditional anecdote out of the way, why is it that I like this book – and more importantly, will you, too?
Colfer is an author known for his wits, his rethorics, his fairly complicated sentence structure and his bestselling YA series. However, I personally think of Colfer´s best works as those outside of the Fowl universe, since he seems awesomely skilled at creating a new set of circumstances, as opposed to using a previous one. Though most of his universes are created on the basis of our own, the world of The Supernaturalist is done so more vaguely than the others – as the story happens in the far future, the world is entirely reformed, exactly perfect for Colfer´s purposes. It´s a bit of self-induced Deus Ex Machina for the author, but it works its purpose.
Few characters in this story are not likeable, and most of them are supplied with a neat, little backstory and a satisfying amount of internal struggles, but at the same time they keep being clearly different, unique and distinguishable from each other. So no real complaints there, in my opinion.
Now, the plot twists. There are lots of them, minor and major, and many of them really are shocking if you haven´t figured them out already – which, to be honest, you probably have, especially in regards of the major one. The plot isn´t completely transparent, but it´s a very clear, white colour that allow you to see the silhouettes of the next thing that´ll happen. You´ll most likely find yourself guessing the next plot twist two or three pages before it happens.
There are those who think that Colfer´s humour is too plain, too linguistic and too heavily basing itself on the hope that you like sarcasm. Both the narrative and characters in this book are sarcastic, and never afraid to tell a joke, regardless of its quality – but that´s a bit of Colfer´s charm, as I see it, and in this book he does it better than in many of his others. If you didn´t get through the first chapter of some of his other words, thinking they were getting too awkward, you might want to give this a chance anyway.
THE CONCLUSION:
Are you the target audience for The Supernaturalist?
For once I´ve been reading something that´s equally Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and to my surprise, it can be done properly. Fans of either genre may like this.
What are, respectively, the best and worst parts of The Supernaturalist?
Predictability isn´t necessarily bad, but it often is. This is a such case, and I´ll make it clear that this is my least favourite part of an actually pretty awesome book.
My favourite part is the connection and similarities that´ll grow between the reader and almost every character. I can´t put my finger on anything specifically, but I really think Cosmo hill has turned out to be a really nice guy.
For me specifically, was The Supernaturalist worth buying?
For me? Yes. It´s officially my favourite book by this author.
There are rumors of Colfer wanting to write a sequel for this one. I´ll let you know that I´ll be getting that novel when it comes out.
