Review | ‘Maya: Seed Takes Root’ has big ideas but is trapped in franchise dreams

The best novels don’t have any compunctions about being wasteful. They spend dozens of paragraphs, if not pages, on a momentary observation, a single thought or moment, or a place that captivated their characters, and likely their readers. People meander. It’s part of what makes them people, and that also goes for a novel animated by them. In fact, these passages — which unsurprisingly resist being faithfully transported to other media like film or television — are also often why people remember certain novels more fondly: they nurture a specific interiority, one that takes both words and minds to bring to life.