Jane, Unlimited

The premise for this book was really interesting. It's sort of a cross between a gothic novel and a choose you own adventure book. Jane gets invited to a party at a secluded mansion by a friendly acquaintance shortly after her aunt dies. But there's a lot going on at the mansion. After hinting at a variety of mysteries, Cashore puts Jane in a room with the option of following one of five different characters, each promising enlightenment about a different question. And then the book breaks into five different stories, one for each choice, with the remaining stories playing out in the background.

It's the sort of experimental thing that I've gotten more and more interested in lately. But I think Cashore threw one too many elements into her mixing bowl. Each of the five stories is a different genre. This worked fine for the first few: a mystery, a thriller, even a horror story. The fourth story is science-fiction, and it's here that I think the book jumped the shark. Looking back there were plenty of hints that the entire story was taking place in a parallel dimension, but it was still an abrupt tonal shift (especially coming on the heels of the horror). It didn't help that science-fiction is not exactly Cashore's strong suit.

I kept going, mostly because I had it in my head that the final story was a romance. Which was my own fault (and Gavin's) for only half paying attention at her book reading and signing. Cashore had actually said that romance bores her, though there had been some speculation about a choose your own adventure romance that I would definitely read. Regardless, the romance I spent the entire book waiting for didn't happen. Instead I got a fairly trite fantasy story that wasn't actually so different from the science-fiction story.

It's a shame, because I genuinely liked the beginning of the book. By the end it had just fallen flat for me. Maybe not a failed experiment, but one that I think had too many variables. It was perhaps a bit too ambitious, and it never quite did what I wanted it to. It's not really the book's fault that it didn't meet my expectations and refused to offer the conclusion I was expecting. I can see what Cashore was going for, and I think my disappointment in the ending is coloring my reaction to the book as a whole.

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