Today I’ll be talking about Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi.

Before I get into spoilerish thoughts I would like to say to those who haven’t read it that Furthermore is an amazingly creative story that takes place in wonderfully magical worlds. Basicly, everything about this book is creative from the world to the characters to the story, even the chapter headings were so different than in other books. The writing style was so poetic it was almost poetry at some points.

I gave this five out of five stars on goodreads, and I put it on my favorites shelf. If you’re a fan of A Wrinkle in Time or Alice in Wonderland I definitely recommend reading this.

Cover reveiw: The cover is very beautiful, probably in my top five covers. It’s kind of busy, but it works and it gives you a good feel for the book, (I almost got it just for the cover.)

Now if you haven’t read Furthermore you should probably leave now because I’m about to get into deeper, more spoilery thoughts.

First of all, that one page prolog was awesome. Great way to start the book. The chapters in Ferenwood just put so many beautiful pictures in my head, which is good since Ferenwood is a world of bright colors and shapes.

Alice was a very interesting character. Her aversion to clothes was an interesting trait. Her power was really cool! And surprisingly powerful. That scene where Alice turned everything black to save Oliver really took this power and showed how awesome it is.

Oliver took a while to grow on me, I never disliked him but through the first half of of the book I didn’t really care for him but by the end I like him.

I was really surprised at the Surrender, for several reasons. One, I didn’t expect all the cool magical powers, it was really awesome. And two, Alice got a black card (score 0) I was sooo not expecting that! Before it went through a list of the scores 1-5, but there was never a moment, not even once, where the possibility of score 0 was mentioned until Alice failed her Surrender.

The first town Alice and Oliver go to, Slumber I think it’s called, I think was a very cool setting. The whole people having dark blue skin with golden tattoos sounds familiar to me but I’m not sure from what. Same for the only-appears-at-night thing. They were both cool elements though.

If you know me you know I’m kinda sensitive about wolves and foxes and can probably guess that I was disappointed when the paper fox turned out to be not as friendly as he first seemed. I mean I was expecting him to end up being evil (it is the world of Furthermore after all) but I was still hoping he would be a little companion to Alice and Oliver on their adventure.

I think Alice made the right choice with the doors, you know the scene where she breaks her ruler in three and gets to pick between fixing her arm, finding her dad, or saving Oliver. Saving Oliver, I think, was the right decision because finding her dad and fixing her arm were things that could be fixed in other ways. I mean they already had plans to both fix her arm and save her dad and what other ways were there to save Oliver? None that I know of.

I like the town of Left. The egg homes were really cool and also, did anyone else notice that where the eggs come from is never specified? Mysterious. The whole time in Left I was going back and forth from “maybe these are the nice people in Furthermore?” and “These people can’t be trusted!”

When we first meet Isal I pictured her as something from mysterious Japanese lore. Them stepping into the paintings was cool, and I was definitely not expecting the painter to turn out to be Alice’s dad, that really caught me off guard. It was a kinda interesting way to find him but I found it to be a pretty abrupt ending, especially with how they got back to Ferenwood. I was thinking “now are they going to go on some big adventure back through Furthermore? Oh yah, Oliver has a door.” It made sense but again it felt a little abrupt.

The scene with Alice and her dad reuniting with the mom was very heart-warming and sweet. I like the way that was done with Alice getting her moment with her mom and then her dad getting his moment. Very nice. And then Oliver pops up, which was nice since that conversation, in my opinion, really drove home the point that they were now friends and the whole adventure in Furthermore wasn’t just a temporary alliance.

I love that the black 0 score card ended up being a you-get-to-try-again-next-year thing. It was a really great, heart-warming happy ending!

That’s all my thoughts on Furthermore. Please put your opinion of it in the comments below as well as a book recommendation for Furthermore fans, such as myself.

That’s all today.

Bye!