What the hell was this? It started off fine, if a little bit bumpy. I
kept waiting for the 'tragic romance' of the premise to begin--frankly, I
was waiting for any kind of action to take place--yet nothing of the
kind ever developed. There was an interesting, if bizarre, set up
involving owls and plates and mysteries, but *fzzzt* it completely
fizzled out. Nothing was ever explained and that ending... What kind
of an ending was that? There was no resolution, no explanation, nothing
that rewarded the reader for investing their time and interest in the
book. Frankly, I can't understand how this won any awards. While the
narrative did have a sort of poetic flow to it, the dialogue was
occasionally disjointed and the character interactions were just...off.
The whole book was off. Where was the great and tragic love story that
was supposed to plague this particular Welsh valley and play itself out
generation after generation? No love story ever came onto the scene,
except for an old one involving one of the character's mother and
another character's uncle, but even then we don't get much of the story.
The entire book didn't make one whit of sense. As I started it, when I
was still fairly excited about it and the characters were searching for
clues, I thought to myself, "Huh, this kind of compares to Susan
Cooper's Over Sea, Under Stone." As I continued reading, though, that comparison flew right out the window...just like those damned paper owls from The Owl Service.Read December 31-January 1, 2012
Originally reviewed on Goodreads January 2, 2012
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