City of Thirst

A great MG Fantasy that suffers from a change of narrators.

BOOK DETAILS:
The City of Thirst by Carrie Ryan & John Parke David, read by Pat Young & Casey Holloway, published by Hachette Audio (2015) / Length: 9 hrs 59 min

SERIES INFO:
This is Book #2 of "The Map to Everywhere" series. Book #3, Shadows of the Lost Sun, is scheduled to be published on 1/10/17. Check out my review of Book #1

**This review may contain spoilers for the previous book.**

SUMMARY:
I really struggled to get past the change of narrators on this one.

Although it is still humorous and fun, the stakes have been raised and the conflict isn't all with people outside the team.

I would like to see more development for the side characters in the next one.

CHARACTERS:
Marrill: It is sometimes easy to forget that other than her father and her mother, who is very ill, she doesn't really have a lot more experience with friendship than Fin does. In this book she struggles with truly heavy problems, and doesn't quite know how work with Fin rather than alone.

Fin: He really struggles in this book with knowing how to make decisions that are truly right and not just right for him. Some of them should be "no-brainers," but for someone who has been on his own for most of his life, it's not that easy.

The Naysayer continues to be a favorite; and I like the addition of Remy, she's funny. We learned a tiny smidgen more about Coll and his migrating tattoo.

WORLDBUILDING:
The majority of the book is spent in a fascinating city that is constantly sinking. Its inhabitants spend all day, every day, working to rescue the sinking parts and move them back to the top.

Before arriving there, our team visits an interesting archipelago where gravity is more than a bit wonky.

PLOT:
The book begins with a piece of corrected homework in which Marrill gives us some backstory. I looked up the text version, and though it was cute; but it didn't quite work as an audio presentation.

Although I am entirely opposed to stealing and to playing with dangerous artifacts, I actually agree with Finn that Ardent doesn't automatically own the Map & Key just because he's the "leader."

The book again end with a satisfying conclusion to the current adventure but no resolution of the larger problems.

HIGHLIGHTS / CAUTIONS:
--This Remy quote:

"The kids in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe didn't have to deal with this stuff. Why couldn't you find a nice wardrobe to walk through, huh?"


--Finn, a male, cries and it isn't presented as a big deal.
--Marrill's new little friend.

NARRATION:
This is the type of dual narration where they each do entire chapters, leading to different voices for the same characters. I'm not fond of this way of doing things.

Note: I loved the narrator of the first book and thought he did a perfect job at capturing the verbally playful nature of the book. That makes it difficult for me to review these two. It was made especially difficult by the fact that both of them missed important puns.

Even setting aside the missed puns, there were several mispronunciations, the most glaring was when she pronounced brazier (a small container for fire) as brassiere (a woman's undergarment).

Everything else was fine.