Northern LIghts

I just finished Northern Lights and found it, as most of the books I’ve read by Ms. Roberts, to be full of compelling characters and fascinating places. She has the ability to make a fictional place seem real – and make you long to visit. She draws her characters richly and gives them all enough quirks to make them larger than life without being unrealistic.

What I take from Northern Lights is a desire to create my characters the same way – with vivid emotional scars and a drive to overcome their personal demons. I would like my readers to feel as I felt when reading this book, that I had to know what happened to the characters and why. The only distraction I would mention is the ending is abrupt, considering the pace of the book. At 470 pages in hard cover, there’s plenty of room for all the important events and the conclusion certainly doesn’t need to crammed into the last ten or so pages. Also this book is standalone, not part of a trilogy as many of Ms. Roberts’ books are, so there’s no follow on for these characters. Lunacy, Alaska is a place I’d like to visit again.