Meh.

The central idea, the settings and the first few chapters are not bad at all, what with the eerie ash covering everything and the horse and the looming dream/memories, but I stopped believing the whole thing half-way through. The characters are quite bi-dimensional and they do improbable stuff like having long-winded conversations while running around with their knees up to their ears, the Polish boy's speech patterns make me want to gouge my eyes out, and now that I think about it there is a whole lot too much running around, in general, for my taste.

Also, I wasn't at all impressed by the sneaky metafictional nods to the fact that the narrative is heavily plot-driven. I can nearly hear the author thinking "sh*t, I wrote myself into a tragic ending and now I need the cavalry to save the day at the last minute, AGAIN. Shall I rethink my approach to this novel? Nah, let's get the deus ex machina to do my job instead of me, and then I'll make the boy ONCE AGAIN muse on the possibility that this is all a hallucination made up by his brain, BECAUSE THE CAVALRY KEEPS COMING AT THE LAST MOMENT. So maybe the readers will not notice what I have done here. And let's leave the whole mess unsolved once I get to writing the end, because, who cares. I can't be bothered". Seriously, I kept waiting till the end for it to be a major plot twist and... niet. The ending itself would have been decent, if it were not for all the guns appearing in the first act and never ever being given a chance to shoot at the end of the third.

Finally, a question for whom already read this novel: that Terminator guy, was it really necessary, except for creating plot without having to actually write one? Wouldn't have spared us a lot of "this can't be real, it's all too convenient for me" and "oh look I thought you were dead impaled on a metallic leg and instead here you are bruised but fine after losing half your blood"? Are you satisfied with the explanation that nobody really knows anything and who cares, I love y'all anyway and life is beautiful?

All in all, a very good occasion spoilt because of sheer laziness. ( )

Really interesting book, I liked the idea even if the end felt a little nebulous ( )

Along with the Chaos Walking trilogy, this book is now one of my favorite Ness novels. A blend of contemporary and dystopian YA, "More Than This" manages to be both familiar yet fresh and all-together compelling. The main characters were very well fleshed-out and each had distinct voices; they were realistically flawed but likeable, and I found myself quite attached to them!
The narrative jumped back and forth in time, and usually I'm not a huge fan of that, but Ness really made it work here. The timelines felt seamless and I liked seeing the pieces fall into place. Also, there was just enough psychological teasing in here to make "More Than This" surprisingly suspenseful! As the scenes unfolded with The Driver I found myself more and more on the edge of my seat. The Driver is seriously one of the most chillingly alien YA antagonists I've read- loved him!

The only reason I'm docking a star from my rating was for the ending. I saw another review call the end too ambiguous, and I agree with that wholly. As a reader I felt like I was missing out of the real climax of the book. Although I don't mind a few loose threads, I think the book could have used a couple more chapters to really wrap things up better.

I would definitely recommend reading this though, no matter what your reading tastes are. Ness is a very talented author and he has yet to disappoint me. Will definitely keep reading his books! :)
( )

Survival

Seth is drowning. Literally. He dies. But then he wakes up in a desolate world, a place that looks similar to where he grew up, but yet it's empty and no one else is around. He thinks he might be in hell. Is he? Or is he somewhere....else?

This has an apocalyptic vibe, at least initially. Then it turns more sci-fi. And then it's also got a philosophical theme going on. I'm honestly not sure how I felt about this one. It was depressing, but hopeful. But more than anything, I felt like it left more questions than answers. Sometimes that's a good thing, but I think in this case I needed a little more closure than I got. ( )

Very strange book. A young man wakes up in an empty world. This first part was very inward looking, and I thought it was going to progress along the lines of "The Wall" by Haushofer. It didn't tho.
I think the main point of the book is to be a small beacon of hope for any who are feeling depressed and suicidal, to show that there is always "something beautiful in the world, if you know where to look", to demonstrate the value of friends. ( )

So is there More Than This? I still don't know, but I sure enjoyed the journey from not knowing to not knowing. That doesn't make sense, but I think that's why I liked the book. It didn't answer the question. It gave you some ideas, threw them up in the air and then let's you see where they will land on your own. Love it. ( )

This is hard to review. I think it would have been better if the writing were less juvenile, and there was a lot of potential with the premise that was unfulfilled. There were plot holes and the plot's pacing was way off, and the characters were stereotypical caricatures for the most part. I think the first part was the best part and it went downhill and got cheesy from there. So why did I give it 4 stars? I really did enjoy reading it and I wanted to know what happened next. I normally hate anything sci-fi but this made me really like it. It was a really unique premise and I truly loved it, despite its flaws. ( )

What a fantastic roller coaster ride of a book. It kept me off balance wondering what would happen next but not giving me much idea of what that would be. I can't even give the slightest detail to friends who may want to read it someday as I feel almost anything beyond what happens in the first 5 pages or so is on some level, a spoiler. Fantastic! ( )

Holy crap, this book was wild, in the best way. ( )

17 year old Seth drowns at sea off Washington State and wakes up in a deserted, post-apocalyptic version of the English town where he lived until he was nine. Is this Hell?

Some pacing problems particularly in the early part before Regine and Tomasz appear, but still an enjoyable and thought-provoking story. ( )

Interesting book that explores the nature of reality in a dystopic future. ( )

Meh ( )

This is no ordinary book. The really cool cover that has a tiny door in it led me to hope that might be the case, and then my dreams came true. As the book opens, the main character Seth drowns. Then he wakes up, in what seems to be his childhood home in England, but the whole neighborhood is deserted. Or is it? You can’t take anything at face value in this book. If you look back at my review (in Best of 2013: Fiction) of The Arrivals by Melissa Marr that has a somewhat similar plot, you’ll see that I questioned whether whether true conceptual originality is even possible. Well, this novel shows that it is, perversely because it plays with the tropes that we’re all so accustomed to. Is any of the stuff that happens to Seth even really happening? If that sounds annoying, well, it is. When I finished the book, I felt frustrated, because even though the story was delivering the true nature of reality (as follows: you have no idea what’s real), I expect a book to have a certain novelistic sense of closure and explanation because it’s not real life, it’s a book. But then I kept on thinking about this book for a long time so I decided that it was a very profound reading experience where a little bit of frustration was okay. Similar to the experience I had with The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann except that this book is quick and fun and easy to read and has a lot of action and also queer content. ( )

I'm not quite sure what I was expecting when I went into this, but I don't think it was what I got. I actually liked it better when it was in second person and the mystery was more solid. Once Seth meets up with Thomasz and the other girl, and the driver is introduced, it felt like a different novel.

Seth wakes up after he dies and assumes he's in hell: what else could it be, if he's completely alone and at the site of his worst memory, half a world away? But when he stars remembering his prior life and meets up with two other residents, nothing becomes any clearer.

Even though Seth believes for a long time he's in hell, it's revealed that humanity took refuge en masse in a virtual reality once the real world could no longer sustain them. Since Seth hit his head in some incredibly precise place on a rock while he was drowning, this booted him out of the system and he "woke up," free from that old reality. The Driver is some kind of AI that monitors the bodies in their cases, and attempts to take Seth and the other two back to where they belong. Eventually, he's defeated and Seth decides to go back into that virtual world and attempt to "wake" everyone up and allow for them to cross between realities.

But there are some strange elements throughout that muddy the plot. Constantly, Seth talks about the fact that everything is a story, and certain things that would happen for a narrative reason do, in fact, end up happening. So is it truly all a story about Seth, even in that world? Or is it all just miraculous coincidence? Or was it all somehow some kind of hallucination?

And how is he planning on convincing everyone that their world is a virtual one, and the real one is somewhere they've willingly abandoned? If he manages that, how could he ever convince them to leave? ( )

dystopian teen fiction like you've never imagined. "Mature content" includes cartoonish violence; two boys lying together; a kidnapping; a girl's abusive, molesting stepdad; and some gun violence. I liked that the main character was gay but that the plotline didn't revolve entirely around that fact (it was a significant part of his character, but that wasn't why everything was happening to him or happening around him). The girl who befriends him is black but it isn't an issue--she just is, just as the third character happens to be Polish (Polish--the other Minority!). As with other Patrick Ness works, you have to wiggle in and wait a bit for him to start working his magic, so this wouldn't be my first choice to give to a reluctant reader, and it doesn't seem worthy of all the eager anticipation that goodreads users would have you believe (I think perhaps they just really love to use animated gifs?). But if you are a reader that wants something with a bit more intrigue, a bit more depth, a bit more mystery, a lot less romance, this could definitely work. ( )

"Maybe the point was that there was no point."

This quote resonated with me at the end of More Than This, though I'm sure it wasn't the novel itself Ness was referring to. It just made NO sense.

The book is slow to start, with the main character not even having some semblance of what's going on until around 40%. Even then, more questions come with the few answers you're given. Someone said that this book is more about existentialism and wondering about what could happen rather than getting some kind of a concrete message from it.

I can appreciate the writing and characters enough not to give it two stars, but I just didn't enjoy reading this. ( )

"Maybe the point was that there was no point."

This quote resonated with me at the end of More Than This, though I'm sure it wasn't the novel itself Ness was referring to. It just made NO sense.

The book is slow to start, with the main character not even having some semblance of what's going on until around 40%. Even then, more questions come with the few answers you're given. Someone said that this book is more about existentialism and wondering about what could happen rather than getting some kind of a concrete message from it.

I can appreciate the writing and characters enough not to give it two stars, but I just didn't enjoy reading this. ( )

This author definitely used up more than his fair share of twists. The book left me completely bewildered and considering an existential crisis, and I loved it. ( )

This turned out to be so different from what I expected from the blurb, but so good. It's twists and turns and incredibly vague ending kept me going until the very last page. Some parts were a little predictable, where I found myself continually one step ahead, but it was still very intriguing. ( )

http://teensniper.tumblr.com/post/61331976873/150-books-in-2013-65 ( )

This book was a major mind fuck. The writing was in the same Patrick Ness style I enjoy so much. The story was interesting, but just a major mind fuck. I often thought about what would happen if you committed suicide, or just died in general. Where would you go? I love the idea that this world is just some kind of imagination and the real world is out there somewhere. That's what I also really liked about this book. The whole, general concept of the book was one I really liked, but some parts of the book were just too odd for me. I liked that Seth eventually learns that choosing to commit suicide didn't solve his problems, I always believed that's what happens when you commit suicide: you take your problems with you and still have to work your way through it, being it somewhere else. I liked how in this book he returns to the place he grew up in, although much darker and more gruesome.

There are still so many things to think about, because this book is just that kind of book. I give it 4 stars, though they are nearing 5. This book is all sorts of amazing and Patrick Ness has a way with story telling. But A Monster Calls was just a book that WOW-ed me so much and it deserved 5 stars, this book wow-ed me a little less, though still did, but therefor will give it 4 stars instead of 5. ( )

I have been a huge fan of Patrick's work ever since I was handed a advance copy of The Knife of Never Letting Go. I really enjoyed this, and loved how different, yet similar to his other works. The depth of character and emotion in the story is part of what made it such an interesting read. I almost stopped reading the book, because I didn't want it to finish. ( )

3 and 3/4 Stars?

I ate through it, and I liked how it was done, and the basic concept was great, but it ended up feeling like a minor work, BECAUSE of the way it functioned, and its own stated goals.
I wanted more ;P ( )

Slow to start but good once it gets going. I think I read somewhere there wasn't going to be a sequel but it would be nice to know what happens next. Could easily be another book or two set in this world. ( )