Gool

This post first published May 27, 2011.

Author: Maurice Gee
Published: September 2010
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Series: The Salt Trilogy #2
215 pages (hardcover)
 
I read the first book, Salt, a long time ago, and I remember liking it but not blown away by it. I was a little hesitant to take out this book, Gool, from the library, because of that, but I thought, “It’s just a little over 200 pages … why not?” I read the whole thing in a few hours’ time.

Gool takes place a generation later, with the children of Hari and Pearl, and the children’s friends, as the main characters. The story begins with Hari taking Xantee and Lo — his own two kids — and four other kids from the nearby village, on a regular scouting mission. Unfortunately, they run into a huge jellyfish-like monster — the gool — that tried to eat them. The party luckily manages to escape, but parts of the gool had latched itself onto Hari’s body, slowly sucking away at his life. They can’t get it off. They only way to save Hari is to destroy the mother monster.

But the gool they encountered is just a spawn of the mother monster. Tealeaf (from Salt) tells the children of a story, possibly a myth, when the gool existed and a fisherman killed it. The children decide they need to go into the ruined city of Belong and find the libraries of books there, to find the true story as to how the fisherman killed the gool. To do so, they decide they need the help of Tarl, the Dog King, Hari’s father and Xantee and Lo’s grandfather.

Gool was okay … it wasn’t as good as Salt, but it can stand on its own as a story. You really don’t even need to have read Salt to understand Gool. This book is really average, in my opinion. The plot was quite simple and straightforward. I didn’t find it that exciting to be honest; the majority of the novel seemed to consist of Xantee and Duro (and whoever else happened to with them) traveling in the jungles and forests. It had some good scenes, such as the ending, but overall, the book felt almost … passive. And a bit boring. Nothing really stands out in my mind. It isn’t horrible, it just doesn’t really grab at you the way you hope for a good book to.

Xantee is arguably the main character in this novel. I was a little bummed that Hari and Pearl aren’t the main characters anymore, but at least Hari is still an important character — the novel revolves around saving his life, after all. Xantee was alright, but she kind of bothered me at times, especially near the ending, when she turned all Mary Sue. The other characters were kind of boring as well. I don’t know. None of the characters were particularly interesting to me, the way Hari and Pearl were in the first book.

This is a really weak follow up to Salt. It is okay, but I am not sure if ‘okay’ is enough to get me to read the third book. (Well, maybe if it’s short like this one I will). The story the author created in Salt was intriguing, and the gool monster in Gool sounded promising for a new story, but I definitely felt quite underwhelmed by this book. I don’t think Salt even needed a sequel, to be honest, and after reading Gool, I only continue to think so.

My Rating: 2/5