29 July 2015

Review: The New Adventures: The Joy Device by Justin Richards

Acquired October 2014
Read November 2014
The New Adventures: The Joy Device
by Justin Richards

Never has a 254-page novel felt so long. Richards maybe has enough of an idea here to fill up a brisk novelette at best. The premise is that Bernice is in a bit of a funk (she lost some of her memories in Return to the Fractured Planet), and decides she needs a vacation to cheer herself up, and her friends don't want her to experience anything that's more fun than them, so they decide to manipulate events to make her think life is boring. Well, one or two times of having her attention diverted would be amusing; fifteen chapters of it is not. In between those bits, the book is pure tedium anywhere. A colossal misfire, not to mention a weird one, given how well Richards handled these characters in Tears of the Oracle, and how the events of the last few books ought to have provided fertile ground for something much more interesting!

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