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Bridge to Bat City
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Original price was: $17.99.$13.80Current price is: $13.80.
Detailed description:
A National Bestseller!
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ernest Cline comes a mostly true tall tale about an unexpected friendship between a young girl and a music-loving colony of bats.
Includes a beautiful map of Austin on the underside of the jacket!
After losing her mother, thirteen-year-old Opal moves in with her uncle Roscoe on the family farm. There, Opal bonds with Uncle Roscoe over music and befriends a group of orphaned, music-loving bats. But just as the farm is starting to feel like home, the bats’ cave is destroyed by a big mining company with its sights set on the farmland next.
If Opal and the bats can fit in anywhere, it’s the nearby city of Austin, home to their favorite music and a host of wonderfully eccentric characters. But with people afraid of the bats and determined to get rid of them, it’ll take a whole lot of courage to prove that this is where the bats—and Opal—belong.
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Categories: Best Books of 2024 So Far
Product name:
Bridge to Bat City
Price:
Original price was: $17.99.$13.80Current price is: $13.80.
Tom Turnip –
This book is bad, very bad. It’s promoted as Cline’s first book for kids, but if you think about it, (a) All his books are already childish, and (b) It’s still full of 80s nostalgia, so his real audience is still Gen X.
Here are some of the many reasons why this is a bad book.
– Cline evidently thinks his normal prose is way too lofty for a juvenile audience, so he dumbs it down considerably, grotesquely overstuffing his narrative with folksy expressions like “big old” this and that. He even acts as if words like “tailor” are fancy words that have to be explained. But Cline is the same author who made a name by glorifying juvenile chatroom insult-flinging. It needed no work to convince anyone he’s childish.
– Cline tries to build characters out of several of his bats, but it’s remarkably tedious, because the only differentiation he gives them is varying musical taste. Then again, this is Ernest Cline, so it’s easy to imagine him thinking that pop culture preferences are a personality.
– The love that the principle characters feel for the bats is odd as well. The words “furry little flying friends” come up several times, loading us down with tactile imagery, but the humans do not ever touch or hug or pet the bats in any way — not once. Can you picture yourself loving a dog without ever touching it? There’s a lot of complaining about the misconception that bats carry rabies, yet no character ever performs the one action that would show by example that they aren’t afraid of catching a bat disease.
– Then there’s Cline’s fawning over the Austin counterculture. It’s a boy crush sort of fawning that comes off like desperation to be accepted, and it’s frankly a bit icky. Here’s Uncle Roscoe telling 13-year-old Opal why Austin is a fabulous place: “The whole crazy town is filled with musicians, slackers, hippies, beatniks, outlaws, cosmic cowboys, and misfits of every stripe!” Super, right? Now ask yourself what you’d think if you had to choose a babysitter for your child out of that pool of applicants. Fortunately for Austin, most of the people who live there are boring, responsible adults, just like most anywhere else — but admitting that would not serve Cline.
– Did I already use the word “tedious?” Because, oh my god, Cline turns the repetitiveness in this book up to eleven. How many times must we read about bats attending a great concert? Only as many times as Ernest Cline wants to promote a musician he likes or pretends to like. And he will never get tired of doing that.
– Space aliens? Really? Yes. They appear once to enable a weird plot point, then are never seen again. It’s also implied that aliens deserve the credit for Buddy Holly’s musical talent.
– The utter laziness and lack of imagination. See “space aliens,” above. At one point, Cline decides to put his characters into front-row seats at a taping of Austin City Limits, then he feels a need to explain how they got there. How does he accomplish this? “Uncle Roscoe had called in a favor.” What? Why on earth would anybody owe this new-in-town deadbeat a favor? If Roscoe had a network of influential friends who owed him favors, wouldn’t the time to call them in have been before his farm got foreclosed and made him homeless? But we aren’t dealing with an author who thinks things through. This is merely a bad author who runs into an incredibly easy plot issue and doesn’t even bother to try.
– Cline bizarrely makes villains out of the Humane Society, describing them as “mean old bat catchers.”
– At some point in the reading, the senseless inanity became so overwhelming that I started hearing the narrative in the voice of Tommy Chong.
– The world-building and lore are simply awful. Why does he conscript real people like Anne Richards and Molly Ivins into his story, having them do things that would be utterly beneath them in real life? It’s more Clineian fawning, only now he’s moved from pop culture into the realm of politics and commentary. His pretend target audience (kids) won’t have a clue what he’s talking about and will ignore it, and half of his real target audience (nostalgic adults) will be turned off. I won’t take a position on politics; I’m only saying that if I wanted Party A to win an election, I would hire Cline to promote Party B.
Yes, this is a bad book. Are there saving graces? Only one, which is that Cline’s ineptitude is kind of funny and has inspired many entertaining videos and podcast episodes that expose it. But if you’re looking for a good story competently told, look elsewhere.
amvion –
Only in my imagination, as I contemplate the latest news of “space aliens,” I envision the bats as Plato’s daemons reemerging from their seclusion, stirring significant trouble among profit-driven corporations and the United States government, both of whom wish these beings would simply disappear. It will require immense bravery for Opal—and indeed, everyone—to welcome these entities into the forthcoming era.
As Plotinus said, “But if man is able to follow the daemon which is above him, he comes to be himself above, living that daemon’s life, and giving the pre-eminence to that better part of himself to which he is being led [towards the Good]; and after that daemon he rises to another, until he reaches the heights [of transforming into a god].”
Jonny –
If you read this Mr. Cline., I cherished Ready Player 1 and have a first edition, first print on display at home. Thus, I pre-order this book. I’m sorry, but this was not enjoyable, at all.
I read it to my kids over a few weeks of evenings in bed, and I honestly dreaded every night. They didn’t understand any of the many musical artists references, obviously, and cringed at the absurdity of the story regularly. I can not recommend this book to anyone.
And don’t even get me started on “Mojo”.
Joshua D. Bosker –
Great fun read..Children’s story but was fun to learn about bats and have a reversion back to childhood
Stewart F. Hoffman –
Mostly an okay read. The language and story are suitable for its intended middle-grade audience, but they’ll struggle to know or care about the musical references.
There’s also a sci-fi element in this book that feels clumsily shoehorned in to give one of the characters abilities, but it’s not developed or explored at all, which was disappointing.
Readers looking for Ready Player One magic should look somewhere else.
James Elfers –
I refuse to give millionaire Ernest Cline money. Luckily, my local library had the audio book available as a free download. Felicia Day’s folksy style is a bit grating at times, but on balance she does a fine job with the material. The problem is the material. Cline is crappy writer. His prose is rage producing for adults and baffling and banal for children. Cline writes down to his audience. Strike one. Cline drops in useless eighties trivia that kids will never care about. Strike two. The pervert has to put a hot mom in every opus, he does so here as well, in a KID’S book! he has his self-insert character behaving like a cartoon wolf when he encounters a Latina MILF waitress. Huge Strike Three!
In competent hands, this story could be pleasing and appreciated by both kids and parents. The problem is it’s in Ernest Cline’s hands! He comes across as your annoying uncle who insists on playing “pull my finger” at family gatherings. We’ve all seen and heard the joke, Unc! Without eighties references this would be a much slimmer and far more interesting book. However, Cline can’t write about anything, but the nineteen-eighties or societies frozen in the nineteen-eighties. If you love books by an irrelevant manchild, this tome is right up your alley.
ZAC –
I really liked this book. Some of the musician references seemed sort of shoehorned into the plot, but it’s a children’s novel. A great set of messages are contained within this fast paced read. It’s ok to be oneself, stick together, and be bold. Highly recommend
Spiros Kagadis –
I highly recommend the purchase of this outstanding book by my favorite author Ernest Cline! The story is amazingly interesting and relevant to our modern times! I recommend this book for people of all ages!
Laurel Perkins –
I have read everything pit out by Ernie, even met him once. Such a nice guy and talented author. This is totally different than anything else I have read by him. I ran the gauntlet of emotions while immersed in Opal’s story – huh? Wow! Wait? Cool!. It was different but in a good way. It would especially be good material for pre-teens, but fun for us all.