The Emerald Atlas - John Stephens
Book 1 in 'The Books of Beginning' series. Followed by 'The Fire Chronicle.'
I'm going to burn this book.
Wow! What?! Karl!
Yeah, I thought that would be an interesting way to start this review, but it's far less dramatic than it may appear.
In The Emerald Atlas we are introduced to siblings Kate, Michael and Emma. They have grown up in various orphanages after their parents mysteriously abandoned them in an event involving some monstrous adversaries that we see portrayed in the prologue, but that the siblings don't clearly remember. The first main chapter of the book has the siblings trying to get adopted but failing when the woman trying to adopt them turns out to be a weirdo. The head of the orphanage them ships them away to the only orphanage she can find that will take them, in a journey that reminds me a bit of Series of Unfortunate Events and some other mildly supernatural series... maybe like a Percy Jackson.
Really, all of the above is kinda rambly and unfocussed, but eventually the storyline takes shape.
The children come across a mysterious book that seems to enable time travel to occur under the right conditions. When they arrive in an earlier time period one of them gets trapped by a witch character who is mining for a mysterious and powerful object (that turns out to be, spoilers, the same book the children now have possession of). We meet various mildly supernatural characters, as well as a race of dwarves who aren't all that helpful, and then eventually we get a show down between the siblings, their allies - including a powerful wizard - and the villains. Everything wraps up well, and then there is a hint at the events that will take place in the next book in the series.
It's fine. It was an easy read. The siblings are different enough to make it interesting, and there are a few twists and turns along the way to the finale.
...so, why the burning?! Was there something terribly offensive, insidiously dark, horribly explicit that means that the book deserves such a fate?!!
Nah, its just that I got this book from a free pile, and in reading it I noticed just how gross and manky this copy was. Even slightly mouldy. So, I'm gonna burn it since its not a copy I'm going to want to keep or give away, and we don't yet have a lot of firewood.
In fact, I guess its a compliment to the author that I read the entire story before deciding that the book copy is too gross to keep. Maybe I actually liked it more than I realised.
Hmmmm....
Completed 4 June 2024.
Comments
Post a Comment