The Fetch by Laura Whitcomb

Okay so I've been putting this one off because I don't really know how to handle it.  But actually it doesn't really matter so let's just dive on in.

My problem with this book is that it isn't A Certain Slant of Light.  That was Whitcomb's first novel, and ladies and gentlemen, it is at the very top of my list.  The TOP I say.  Becca and I sometimes get into fights about this, because nothing in the universe will ever surpass Hunger Games for her, but for me, there is one young adult book that can, and it is A Certain Slant of Light.  Oh man.  I don't even know what to say about that book except that it is perfect.  I'm afraid that summarizing it will make it sound silly, because summaries always do; suffice it to say, it has ghosts and a love story and redemption and the writing is beautiful in a way that you don't often see in YA.  Just go read it.  Seriously.  

So, you can see the difficulty here.  The Fetch is Whitcomb's second novel, and for me it just didn't measure up.  I don't know how anything really could, but still, the comparison is still there, however unfair it is.  It deals with some of the same general ideas as Light. . . which I guess is a good time to segue into summery:

So, Calder is a Fetch, which is to say, a person who has died and, instead of going straight to heaven himself, has been chosen to lead other souls from their deaths and into heaven.  The thing is that as he visits this series of death scenes, he starts to be fascinated with a living woman who is always there, and eventually  decides to take on a human body to pursue her and make her his fetchin' apprentice.  Things get kind of weird when it turns out that the body he's taken is Grigori Rasputin's (hence the multiple assassinations not working, which okay was kind of clever), and he gets all caught up with Romanov children post-Revolution, and things get all out of control. 

I think the thing that made me less in love with this book to begin with is its scope.  The thing with Certain Slant of Light is that sure, it involves these people's spirits who have been wandering around for centuries, and that is not exactly a comfortable spectrum, but the book itself takes place in the space of like a week, and it only involves a few people, and they all relate to one another intimately and in a way that is relatable and makes sense.  In The Fetch, I struggled to really feel grounded in anything--being all other-worldly, Calder passes through like 20 years of human time in fewer pages.  Once he (and the story) become grounded in regular time, they're at first all up in the Russian Revolution (not a recipe for anyone's comfort) and then they're off on a world tour for various reasons, and it was hard to ever really get a feel for where they were or what their time period was supposed to feel like or what they were actually doing.  Okay, really, that's more a personal problem--something I know about myself is that I get uncomfortable if I don't have a plan for what is going on.  Not that everything has to be obvious or heavy handed, I just like having some kind of framework in my mind to give everything context.  I guess that in the end that's the real problem I had with this book--there were no clues as to how or where or when anything was going to happen, and so when things did happen it was difficult to really determine their significance.  Every time the 'bad guys' came around, I was thinking, okay, so is THIS the climax?  Um, maybe?  Wait, okay, I guess not...and then when the final showdown actually came, there was really nothing to make it the Final Showdown except that then the book ended, so you know, okay.  

Okay so I'm being really harsh here and it's a shame, because if this were just some book I'd picked up off the shelf I'd probably have been thrilled with it. I was just expecting so much after the beautiful craftsmanship of her first book, I suppose it made me a rather difficult reader to please.