This meme was created by Joe from JW Martin – Storeys of stories!
The rules:
- Read first chapter (or chapters if they are short)
- Give my ‘first impression’
- Predict my rating
- After finishing it, compare the results 🙂
So this time I decided to go with And the ocean was our sky, this is a really short book, but Patrick Ness has quickly become one of my favourite authors, so I’m curious what I think about this one!
Title: And the ocean was our sky.
Author: Patrick Ness.
Illustrator: Rovina Cai
Format: Hardcover.
Genre: YA, fantasy, retelling.
First impressions:
So before I started reading this I was a bit dubious about this book. It is a retelling of Moby Dick, which I have never read, and also don’t think I will like. But I guess I won’t know until I read it. I was really excited about the drawings, I looked at them just flipping through the book and they look gorgeous! For some reason I thought this would be some kind of child story, like middle grade? So I was really not sure what I would think.
After the first two chapters, his writing is beautiful! They way it is told is really interesting, since you read it from the perspective of the whale! I’m now pretty sure this is no middle grade, the writing is too complicated for that!
I think I will rate this book 4 stars, since it would not surprise me if I start to struggle with the writing.
Final thoughts:
I loved this book! It was so beautifully written! It is true that sometimes I struggled a bit with the writing, but since the story was so beautiful I could not give this book anything else then a 5 star rating!
This book is a retelling of Moby Dick, and I have to admit that I’ve never read this story or felt the need to. But now I’m definitely interested! Not sure when that will happen though, since it is a quite dense book!
The drawings do add so much to the story! They are quite simple, but they represent the story really well. Personally I really enjoy this ‘artstyle’, I’m no artsy person, but I liked this style of paintings.
I would recommend this book to lots of people, but I can definitely see that it is not for everyone.
Come talk to me!
Have you read this book? What did you think?