Planesrunner

Today’s post is on Planesrunner by Ian McDonald. It is 268 pages long including a dictionary at the end. It is published by PYR. The cover has two of the main characters one running towards the reader from an iPad and other has her hands thrown out with cards coming from them. The intended reader is young adult but I do not think that YA’s have the attention span for this novel. There is no language, no sex, and all the action is pretty tame. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- There in not one you. There are many yous. There is no one world. There are many worlds. Ours is one among billions of parallel earths.
When Everett Singh’s scientist father is kidnapped from the streets of London, he leaves young Everett a mysterious app on his computer. Suddenly, this teenager has become the owner of the most valuable object in the multiverse-the Infundibulum- the map of all the parallel earths, and there are dark forces in the Ten Known Worlds who will stop at nothing to get it. They’ve got power, authority, the might of ten planets- some of them more technologically advanced than our Earth- at their finger-tips. He’s got wits, intelligence, and a knack for Indian cooking.
To keep the Infundibulum safe, Everett must trick his way through the Heisenberg Gate that his dad helped build and go on the run in a parallel Earth. But to rescue his dad from Charlotte Villiers and the sinister Order, this Planesrunner’s going to need friends. Friends like Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth, her adopted daughter, Sen, and the crew of the airship Everness.
Can they rescue Everett’s father and get the Infundibulum to safety? The game is afoot!

Review- I wanted to like this book. The concept is strong, I know McDonald as a writer, and the publisher is very picky about who they publish. But somewhere McDonald just dropped the ball. This is book is not for YA. It is too wordy, the characters are boring, the plot ploddingly slow. I was bored for most of this book. I would count the pages in chapters just to see how long they were so I would read one then go do something else before reading another chapter. I can think of nothing that I enjoyed about this book and that is making writing this review so hard. All the action scenes that happen just feel like filler, the narration was terrible, really there was nothing that I liked about this book. And that is too bad because I wanted to like this book. It sounds wonderful, so promising but I really do not know where McDonald went wrong but this book really is just plain old boring. If you want to want McDonald get his adult stuff. It is so much better.

I give this book One out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.