Timijan's Reviews > Impossible Creatures

This book infuriated me!

I read all genres, and I’ve read my fair share of children’s books. When I read a New York Times article that this book is breaking Harry Potter records, I was intrigued. I couldn’t wait for it to come out in the US, so I ordered it from the UK and paid for international shipping. In the meantime, I saw an article in the Washington Post that Rundell was “this generation’s Tolkien”.

Needless to say, my expectations were high and I was pumped to start reading this book.

But I’m sad to say that it didn’t live up to the hype, not at all, not in the slightest. And Kathrine Rundell is not this generation’s Tolkien; saying that is an insult to a genius that’s not longer with us. Katherine Rundell is just a mediocre bad writer.

It took me so long to finish this book (11 days!) because I couldn’t care less about any of that. The characters are unlikable and I didn’t care an ounce about what would happen to them. The worldbuilding is flawed and uninspired; J.K. Rowling literally invented more original and interesting Fantastic Beasts for the Harry Potter series, whose focus isn’t even in the magical creatures (also, the UK logo of Impossible Creatures looks oddly similar to the logo for the Fantastic Beasts movie franchise, but I won’t get into all of that in all of this). And the pacing and the plot were simply horrible.

What anyone saw in this book to praise it so highly, is beyond me. It felt like torture, getting through this book, which is supposed to be adventurous and full of wonder. It is not.

Learn from my mistakes and save your money, because the price tag attached to this book is too steep for the journey it will take you on. Which is bland, predictable, and insufferable.

The only thing that I concluded from finishing this book is that Katherine Rundell is a very well-connected woman with a lot of big names in the publishing world, which is how she was able to unleash this crap into the wild with the hype that’s attached to it.

My brain still hurts from this “adventure”. Do yourself a favor, and if you want to read some decent children’s literature that’s actually filled with wonder, awe and adventure, check out Diana Wynne Jones. Now, that’s a children’s author that deserves all the undeserved praise that Katherine Rundell is receiving. (And she was actually Tolkien’s pupil.)