Percy Jenkins

I had to read this book for Year 11 English, and at first it looked promising. The story seemed like it was somewhat interesting but after I read the book, I was disappointed with the writing style: - The writing style seems good in practice but is just hell to read. Zusak was trying to personify his narrator, Death, by constructing and showing the reader his thoughts. This resulted in the book being mostly short sentences that get tired to read after a long period of time. An example of this is from page 121, "You didn't see people. Only uniforms and signals." I'm pretty sure that there should be a comma there instead of a full stop, but I guess I don't have the writing experience that Zusak has. - Some of the sentences didn't even make sense. Another example from page 121 shows this, "Birds above did laps." That is the sentence. There is no "the" at the start. As far as I'm concerned, if I tried to put that into an essay my English teacher would mark me down significantly for poor grammar, but I guess I don't have an English degree like my teacher does. - Death's interjections are actually quite annoying. These are basically small quotes that either give foreshadowing or prolepsis, but they really just interrupt your already broken reading flow. I never particularly liked reading Geronimo Stilton books when growing up, and these interjections are basically that. All in all, if this book was written better I think I would of given it a higher rating. The only reason that it isn't getting a one star is because the story is decent.