'Stolen by the Storm Thief'
Storm Thief
By Chris Wooding
310 pages
New York: Scholastic Books, 2006
Cost: $8.99

If you are looking for a book in which the author intricately twines mystery and fantasy to create a concoction that makes you wonder throughout the whole book about the outcome of the unfortunate events in the lives of the equally unfortunate characters, do not-I repeat-do not read Storm Thief by Chris Wooding.
In the city of Orkos, 'probability storms' occur randomly and alter or displace people, objects or even cities. Moa and Rail, 2 young adults living in Orkos, face many challenges after they steal a valuable artifact that could alter not only their lives but the lives of the whole city.
Seems interesting, right?
WRONG!

What Wooding forgets is that his audience consists of human beings with thinking minds that look forward to twists in plot. There are millions of books with the same, trite, and boring plot- main characters are misunderstood, they get in trouble, have to run, they hide, get caught and soon somehow the whole sob story becomes a happy one.

So predictable. Where's the fun in reading book in which you know the ending after reading 100 pages?

But what's worse is that the ending is undeveloped! It's almost as if Wooding ran out of time and threw in a paragraph to attempt to wrap it up. His attempt though, was fruitless because the ending, simply put, sucked. Wooding leaves a million questions unanswered. He annoys the reader with such an ambiguous ending that the reader simply gives up. Wooding leaves the reader hungry for more, but not hungry enough to actually read the sequel. After one true disappointment, who wants to knowingly plunge themselves into another?
Chris Wooding didn't sell his audience his first book well enough to make his audience CARE what happens in the next book.
Wooding assumes that the audience knows all about his little fantasy world. This is where Wooding makes a huge mistake. He doesn't explain certain things about the city that would enhance the readers understanding of the events. Boringness and the confusingness don't really make for a good book.
The author incorrectly mixes mystery, love, sadness, fear, friendship, loyalty and fantasy. There was too much mystery in an already confusing fantasy book. Wooding utterly confuses the reader with facts that the reader later realizes are unnecessary. Wooding changes the setting at the time when the reader needs the further clarification that will give the reader the will to continue reading. In total, the book was mostly hard to follow along.
Chris Wooding, a full-time writer currently living in London, England, was trying to create a book where there was reality in a fantasy book. He tried to make everything seem normal and regular in his book. Well obviously there was something wrong because his world had Revenant ghosts and 'probability storms'. I believe him trying to do that caused confusion with the reader. The reality and fiction world clashed in the readers mind causing more questions that Chris Wooding, yet again, left unanswered.
In the end, the overall effect of Storm Thief was displeasing. Wooding's plot leaves the reader bored and frustrated. The boringness and confusingness of the book just causes the overall effect itself to be sour. The book would have been much better if Wooding didn't change the scene so often. Also it would have been better if he actually explained certain events to keep the reader in the loop of what was happening in the book. Albeit Wooding does so much as to write a sequel, any reader, having read Storm Thief, would agree that it would be a waste of time to read something whose only qualifications for being a book is the prodigious number of pages.