The Other Valley

Time travel of a different sort. An interesting premise. Forced myself to bypass the unusual world and lack of science, but not sure there is enough left in this author's first novel.

The world building is interesting - comparable to young adult novels like The City of Ember or First Light. 16 year old narrator Odile Ozanne gives the reader the chance to see the world, and her vetting for a future custodianship of the valley shows us even more. The second part of the novel is a good counterpoint to the first, with the ending giving even more information.

And yet... things are strange enough that I almost feel there is a metaphor here I missed. Set in a relatively small valley and town, much is missing - factories, food and alcohol production, etc. The outpost or colony reason from other books isn't here - but this community can't be self contained. Explaining why identical valleys to the east and west would exist 20 years into the past or future is yet another problem. I kept reading, kept hoping, and was eventually disappointed in the lack of an explanation.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this book lacks punctuation and other marks, making it more difficult to read mechanically. Additionally, the names and jobs are in French, for no apparent reason. Again, if this was done as a metaphor, or to take the reader out of their comfort zone, I missed the reason.

Picked up on a whim, this was in my realm of reading, and somewhat thought provoking. Will keep an eye out for a future book from this author, or perhaps an interview. Overall rating for this book, for me, just 2½ stars (out of 5).