Review: Wildwood by Colin Meloy

 

Wildwood by Colin Meloy

3.5/3.7★

Slight spoilers, not enough for the spoiler filter

Read in preparation for the Laika adaptation

Summing up the 15 minute audio I sent my bf, it has great ambiance, and a good purpose of a storyline, but it seemed too... convoluted? Lets start with the positive aspects:
Impeccable world building, very well thought and complex (maybe a bit too much)
Great introduction in a higher middle grade for war and violence. Tho it gets a bit graphic by the end, I'm assuming this book is targeted towards 11-13 year olds, and so themes of war were handled accordingly, not romanticising it but not getting to the gritty details.
The illustrations were stunning, specially the full pages, I'll always encourage a good illustration and this checked all my boxes!
This only applies to the Castilian translation z but definitely one of the best ones I've read, terms of the authors own writing and the translating work, the vocabulary was insanely rich and had me discovering new verbs and weapon names.

Now to the weird aftertaste:
I feel the birds were severely underutilized. Like, c'mon, a whole nation of them just to use as transport or messengers? I wished we saw more of them.
Same with Alexei. Why would you make such a big deal of Alexandra's past if then it has almost nothing to do with her motivations and driving, even attempting to murder MORE KIDS? Wouldn't it have awaken some sort of empathy in her? Some pity or resemblance? I'm hoping Laika will bring more attention to it, since the trailer showed part of it.
Same with the Ivy. Maybe I dissociated through the explanation but it just seemed out of pocket? Has it acted before? How does it work? How would it be used?
I couldn't connect with Curtis at all. I understood his development, but his POV seemed rather boring, mainly coming to his ignorance. I mean, even at 12, don't you have the awareness that war is wrong? Wouldn't you try to understand the conflict? Especially his ending, I don't understand why he would do that, being that young and having the chance to be flexible (leaving it vague here but I think he should have gone with Prue).

I understand it's a "kids book" and so some themes would be superficial, but I think it was a bit mis-focused and should have gone deeper on character motivation and personality analysis. Left me with quite a few questions and wondering if there're actual plot holes or if I got bored during the second part and therefore lost most of the explanation.

Very excited for the film tho!! I think they can do something truly outstanding with the source material and the production's touch.