The Anomaly (The Anomaly Files, #1) in Around the World in 80 Books

Jun 19, 2018 Jillian rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. 3.5 stars. Hmm...okay. This one is hard to review. On the one hand, very likable engaging protagonist and fun lovable British sidekick. Good character development and definitely had me needing to know what was going to happen.

But....it takes a REALLY long time for anything to happen here. Like almost 200 pages for your first really interesting moment. And then we have this very unexplained phenomena which could be really interesting but is left so unexplained that I’m leaving this book going, “ 3.5 stars. Hmm...okay. This one is hard to review. On the one hand, very likable engaging protagonist and fun lovable British sidekick. Good character development and definitely had me needing to know what was going to happen.

But....it takes a REALLY long time for anything to happen here. Like almost 200 pages for your first really interesting moment. And then we have this very unexplained phenomena which could be really interesting but is left so unexplained that I’m leaving this book going, “wait, what?” There were many references to conspiracies that weren’t really delved into, so I didn’t exactly know what the conspiracies were exactly.

I mean, we have this machine that creates living animals. I mean, what?! Why don’t these characters seem more amazed that there’s a cave that creates unicorns and dinosaurs? Why is the biggest point of interest this hypothetical world takeover? Why not like...hey this could be where God (whatever that now means) made people. But instead there’s this convoluted story about giants? And I still don’t understand who Feather was exactly, or what they were trying to do. They needed Nolan to find this cave, right? But did he need to activate it or was that a mistake? The point being, why didn’t feather just kill them all as soon as she had confirmation this was the cave they were looking for? What was the point of leaving them in there? How did the damn thing “reset?”

I also had a hard time picturing things. Partially because it was in the dark, but also because everything was described as some kind of geometric shape and my abstract mind struggles with those images. I also couldn’t imagine balls of carbon....?

It’s funny because usually the criticism of these thrillers would be lack of character development but in this case, that’s the thing that saved this book for me. I would not call this a horror story, but a thriller/fantasy. Also Noah’s ark was meant to save the animals, and this produces monsters who purge the world and then animals that replace them....did I miss when the flood happened?

I don’t know, I wanted to understand more than I did. I wanted more explanations, more uncovered, and less wandering in the dark.

PS. Who are Samuel, Maqk, and George from the Prologue? Is George GE Kincaid? What does Samuel mean when he says “I need to finish it?” Finish what? ...more

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