“The Call” by Peadar O’Guilin is a story set in Ireland, where the Sídhe, known as Irish fairies, have been cut off from the rest of the world. The Sídhe want to take back their former home by kidnapping human teenagers and mutating and deforming them. When someone is taken by the Sídhe, they have been “called.”
This book sounded exciting and suspenseful in theory, but was not what I was hoping for. “The Call” tries to emulate the essence of classics from “The Hunger Games” to “Harry Potter”, but it seems to fail through lackluster themes and ineffective twists. My personal issue with the book is that the writing may not be understandable for the average reader. Some sentences were long and incoherent. I had to read lines over and over again to understand what the author was trying to get across.
The writing also never went in depth of the story. “The Call” lacked background information on the scenery and characters individually, so it made it difficult to connect to any of them. O’Guilin also seemed to disclude descriptions of his character’s physical attributes, so readers are not given a persona to envision. Most importantly, the main character was not described as the story progressed, so many readers may find it difficult to fully imagine and immerse themselves in this fictional world.
One of the most notable issues, however, is how the main character lacked depth. She showed no emotion and had no feelings, making readers unable to fully understand her. This detracts from the story’s attempt at an intense and compelling plotline, and it was hard to connect to the character and get attached to her.
Overall, this book had the potential to showcase an intriguing storyline but was not well executed. The writing was poor and would have been more engaging if the author would have gone deeper into the plot with more significant developments and twists.
