Twisted

i just want to say this now, this book is pure amazing and shows that anything can be possible story wisemif you put your mind to it, people who thinks that alternat dimentions and loving theme park rides is silly but i think it is a great idea and it inspires others ti try and write their own stories

I would be lying if I called Twisted! a good novel. If anything, it's quite the opposite. Yet, deep down, I do have a soft spot for it. I just love the idea of were-roller coasters. It sounds crazy but it's just so original and Leek's develops this concept so well. Her world-building is the best part of this story as she is so thorough, describing everything from her creations' biological functions to their economy. The accompanying pictures are also beautiful and it's clear that Leek's true talent lies in her artwork.However, a lot of my liking for this novel is due to just how cliched and poorly written it is. It's like a bad horror movie, truly enjoyable just because it is so poorly constructed. The plot, beneath its shiny wrapping, is very unoriginal - a straight fantasy story about a chosen one waging war against an evil king. The plot is riddled with magical convenience and builds to a final show down which contains not one, but two deus ex machinas in order to save the day.The prose is also poorly constructed and the story could really have done with a good proof read and edit. It's massively too long and I think that most of the superfluous details and repetition could have been cut in order to better streamline it. The grammar was also atrocious, including frequent spelling mistakes, incorrectly used words and genuinely poor sentence structure. While this sometimes lead to unintentional hilarity, it also made the story often feel slow and clunky.The characters are split down the middle into two sides; good and evil. The evil rides are purely that way because of the circumstances of their creation. That's it. They don't have any motivation or redeemable features. Even main characters come across as being horribly shallow. Thunderbark is the wise old man archetype while Clare does nothing for herself in the story, instead existing only to be rescued again and again.Yet the worst character of all is Railrunner. He is possibly the biggest Gary-Stu I have ever read, described as being roller coaster Jesus (seriously) and developing more and more powers as the need for them arose in the story. He also does little in the first quarter other than murder every human in sight. Although the author seemed to want us to sympathise with Railrunner, this made it somewhat difficult. No matter how he tried to justify it, he was still a mass murderer. I fully appreciated why the police and FBI wanted him dead.All in all this is a poorly written and cliched fantasy epic, yet I'd still recommend it to everyone. If nothing else, you'll be able to tell everyone you know that you've read a novel about a were-roller coaster!