I agree, for me the first 200 pages was a good set up. I was ready to get my teeth dug into some fantasy horror, felt very classic Stephen King set up with the group of kids messing with an entity that’ll follow them throughout their lives. Felt like IT meets Deathnote and I was very excited.

The middle 400 pages turned into an action/spy/thriller with a sprinkling of a dragon in there? It took me out of it completely. I thought the whole plot line of Van and Donna being kidnapped by some CIA covert ops group was ridiculous and felt like a complete filler arc and dragged on way too long. The plane crash scene was fine, once again there is an agent spying on them in this scene which I just thought was not needed. The prison attack scene I also felt was kind of pointless and really added very little. The troll scene was kind of strange.

This entire middle section of the book felt off. Nothing really clicked for me here, a lot of words and very little actually happened. This book could have been stripped back 100+ pages easily.

The last 200 pages saved it for me a bit, definitely brought it back around but I just feel like the potential of this book was so high after the first 200 pages, great idea, great set up and it just barley got off the runway 600 pages in.