Book Review: Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman

• Title: Tess of the Road
• Author: Rachel Hartman
• Year: 2018
• Type: Fiction

I vaguely remember hearing about this book when it came out. At that time it ended up on a ‘to read eventually’ list, but didn’t go any further into my awareness than that.

Then I finally reviewed the list while converting it to a different todo list tool. In that process, I looked up each book to see whether my library had it. This was one that it did, so I finally got around to checking it out.

I’m not sure why this book is categorised as Young Adult (YA). It’s not really so different from the other fantasy books I’ve read. But the author self-identifies as a writer of YA speculative fiction, so whatevs. I’ll read it whatever the label on the spine.

The story starts off slowly and I wasn’t overly inclined to continue. Obviously I did and patience was rewarded by the story picking up considerably once the protagonist Tess finally made it to that Road. It was a decent story, with familiar elements of coming-of-age and finding-oneself mixed in with action and adventure. The familiarity made for a read that was comfortable but not particularly inspiring, which was actually good in this case since I was reading it in bed before falling asleep.

The book ended right as the protagonist and colleagues were to head off for new adventures, so naturally there’s another book to follow. It looks like it was released in 2022 and is also available at my library. Since this book was decent enough, I’ll probably pick up the sequel so I can finish off the tale, but the story isn’t burning a hole in my brain so the sequel can wait its turn in the queue.