Brayden Griffith

We had to read this in our grade 8 class. (special ed) It was fine at first, with Francais' backstory and all. But I really feel like the plot was leading nowhere almost the entire time, and a lot of the book just felt like filler content. An example would be the chapter "The Miracle of Minerva", where she somehow gets other-worldly powers and destroys an entire "residential school". (even though they're basically death camps) It was filler because the author didn't give any previous info about Minerva, and the only red herring that was implied was the fact that she was a mysterious hag, and nobody knew about her. And that's just one example of the filler that the author used. And it's not just the filler. The fact that Dimaline packaged so much information into a 300 paged book also perplexes me. Global warming, water wars, bone marrow harvesting done by machine-like freaks... And a love story that doesn't go anywhere to wrap it all together. It's the literature equivalent of a hot-dog with too much ketchup and mustard, getting all over your clean, white shirt. And of course, we now have a project to "relate" to one of the main characters in the book, which is a whole other topic of its own. 2/5, my brain cells are not alive.