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Tristan Strong Punches A Hole in the Sky is the debut of author Kwame Mbala. It is among the first if not the first in the project started by the PJO author, Rick Riordan Presents, and features a world filled with African Folklore Heroes and Gods.
Seventh-grader Tristan Strong feels anything but strong ever since he failed to save his best friend when they were in a bus accident together. All he has left of Eddie is the journal his friend wrote stories in. Tristan is dreading the month he's going to spend on his grandparents' farm in Alabama, where he's being sent to heal from the tragedy. But on his first night there, a sticky creature shows up in his bedroom and steals Eddie's journal. Tristan chases after it — is that a doll? — and a tug-of-war ensues between them underneath a Bottle Tree. In a last attempt to wrestle the journal out of the creature's hands, Tristan punches the tree, accidentally ripping open a chasm into the MidPass, a volatile place with a burning sea, haunted bone ships, and iron monsters that are hunting the inhabitants of this world. Tristan finds himself in the middle of a battle that has left black American gods John Henry and Brer Rabbit exhausted. In order to get back home, Tristan and these new allies will need to entice the god Anansi, the Weaver, to come out of hiding and seal the hole in the sky. But bartering with the trickster Anansi always comes at a price. Can Tristan save this world before he loses more of the things he loves?
For Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, I think I'm going to go with a 3.5 out of 5. It sucks because I wanted this book to be a 4 or even 5, because I have gained a new love for exploring the less-explored mythologies and cultures in books, and the idea of African American folklores becoming gods was really interesting to me.
This had a lot of things I wanted to love... And I really did like it, but I didn't quite love it, and that all falls to the execution. But I'll get there. Let's focus on what I did like first.
Well, obviously, the lore, as I just said. And as a person who adores stories, I really loved the care and passion this story showed for storytellers, and it did a great job capturing the joys and essence of what it feels like to create while conveying it in a MG type of writing.
Tristan may make me wanna whack him at times, but overall, he was a very enjoyable character to follow along. He was crafted well, and you could see a lot of the difficulties and pains he was dealing with. It tied in very well with the message of not ignoring and shoving down the stuff that wasn't liked. Pain comes with joy, and we have to face that, and Tristan was a great central player to move that along.
The world itself was very alive and magical and rich with symbolism and tie ins. I mean, the monsters themselves were chains, and a little on the nose or not, it felt powerful to me, someone who is a white American, so I can only imagine how it must have felt for those very aware and affected by our horrible past interactions with African Americans.
So if I liked all of this stuff, and I thought the message and lore was well crafted and well delivered, why didn't I fully love it?
For one, as alive as these felt, the characters... Not really. I get this is Middle Grade, but a lot of the characters just felt two dimensional to me outside of Tristan. It could have just been Tristan and Gum Baby on the trip and I wouldn't have noticed too much of a difference. I wanted to like all of the characters, but they just didn't feel real to me, and that really sucked. A few of the folklore characters felt like they were half way there to three dimensional, but not quite to the amount they should have been.
The story also just felt so much longer than it needed to be with a good bit of it feeling repetitive. Lots of the same things being said and done but in a different spot. Yes, to a point, each added new characters, but given the complaint I just made about the characters... It just felt like more could have been done in each area to make it feel more separate from all the previous location.
I did really like the ending though and it all tying tying together, and I already own the second book, but if I didn't, I would have wanted to read more from this world. I just... I really wish the story had more oomph and life to it, because from certain spots I can definitely see it possible, it just didn't.
Recommend this? Yes. Just be prepared if you're like me for the read to feel longer than it should be.
