This book took me a long time to read, over a month, which for me is at least 3 weeks longer than usual. I kept thinking “where is the plot?” and “what is this book really about?”
I found that the characters didn’t get fleshed out enough and I didn’t go on the journey with them, rather I watched (apathetically) from a distance. There were some characters that seemed randomly thrown in the book. They were developed enough to be characters rather than “book extras”, but just when they became real, they disappeared suddenly for most of the book only to reappear briefly, much later on and for no good reason. I daresay the cameo characters could have more interesting stories to tell than the main one told in this book; two of these characters had unresolved subplots when the book ended and I found that a bit frustrating.
There were also a few chapters sprinkled throughout the book written in a different font (and no explanation in the title as to the voice behind them) and they were just plain confusing. I knew it wasn’t the main character but I didn’t know who it was and was more perplexed with trying to figure that out than to care or understand what that voice was saying. By the time I connect the character with the voice (right far into the book), I had completely forgotten what was said in those first few confusing chapters and didn’t care to go back and read them. If it would have spoiled some of the plot to reveal that voice right away then I just don’t see the point in having those random chapters in there at all; they came across as a gimmicky (like those movies that are out of order chronologically and don’t make much sense until the end) and did nothing to move the story along.
There is a story in the Visibles and it could have been a great one; parts of the book were very readable and interesting. The plot, as it turned out, was there in the beginning and in the end, it just got lost—really lost— in the middle. It’s almost as if Shepard had a great idea for a book, sold the publisher on the idea, wrote the first and last few chapters, and then struggled to fill in the 220 pages in between. Or maybe I just struggled reading the inner 220 pages…
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