The Sound and The Echoes Review

Rating: 3/5

Title: The Sound & The Echoes

Author: Dew Pellucid

Page Count (ebook): 279

Official Amazon Description

The Sound and the Echoes is a high-concept, fantasy adventure for young adults, with 27 magical illustrations.

Imagine that everyone around you has a mirror image living somewhere else. Your world is like a sound, which produced that other world of echoes. And in this land men are governed by a terrible law—no Echo is allowed to live after his Sound dies.

One Sound especially must die. The Prince’s Sound. The Fate Sealers and Fortune Tellers will make sure of that! Because after this Sound dies, the Echo Prince will have to die too.

Now, twelve-year-old Will Cleary is about to discover that he is the Sound the Echoes are hunting. And so begins his perilous adventure into a see-through, sparkling world, filled with spying crystal balls, an eerie fortress of castaway children, a hunt for clues in an ancient book of riddles, and a last-chance escape through a frozen gem-studded lake into a secret land that holds the key to placing the Prince on the throne and returning freedom to the Echoes.

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My Thoughts

      Though the description of The Sound & The Echoes states that this is a Young Adult novel, at several points in the book I found myself wondering exactly how it could be defined as belonging to the YA genre. Most of the YA novels I have read feature characters between the ages of 15-19 who are teenagers in every sense of the word. However, The Sound & The Echoes' main character was twelve years old for the majority of the book and it seemed to be written for an audience of the same age, which left me feeling more than a bit confused as to how this could be classified as a YA book.

        I did enjoy the story, it was extremely creative and unique, something I appreciate in a literary world where there are far too many cookie cutter books around. And at points, I even felt like I was reading some alterior version of the Harry Potter series, with the main character being a male twelve years in age who arrives at an orphanage of sorts with a Dumbledore-esque headmaster and proceeds to become aquaintances with an equally outcast boy and girl.

    I think this is an excellent book for a younger age range, simply because it seems to revolve around the sort of interests a younger audience would appreciate; I believe my twelve year old self would have loved this book. Overall, I found that The Sound & The Echoes was a good read, with an excellent plot line, though I would say it belongs more to an age range of 9-13 than the typical YA genre.

     In your opinion what makes a novel, a YA book?

Book Links:

Amazon

Book site

War Horse

       Last night I had the privilege of going to see the play War Horse which is currently being hosted in Toronto, Canada by Mirvish, and so I just had to write about the experience which was to put it in a word, phenomenal.War Horse, as you may or may not know started like many great stories do, as a book. The novel War Horse was written by Micahel Morpugo in 1982 and then adapted both as a film and as a play. Though I haven't read the book yet, I watched the movie version of War Horse, which was released in 2011, earlier this year and immediatley fell in love with the story.

      

      If you're not familiar with War Horse, here's a description from the Mirvish's theatrical trailer:

"This powerfully moving and imaginative drama, filled with stirring music and songs, is a production of phenomenal inventiveness. At its heart are astonishing life-sized puppets created by South Africa's Handspring Puppet Company, who bring breathing, galloping, charging horses to life on stage."

 -Mirvish

     The play adapts the story beautifully, and the puppetry of the Handspring Puppet Company is simply amazing, they truly brought the horses to life.  From the beginning to the end I was completely immersed in the story, wonderstruck by how well it was executed. The acting is superb, and the music is so beautifully integrated that I forgot there was actually an orchestra playing just below me in the orchestra pit until the end of the play. As for the set, I felt as if I was truly frolicking in the English fields with Joey and Albert as they grew up and standing right beside them on the front lines of the First World War. I absolutely urge you to go and see War Horse; it is beyond extraordinary.

      As a further note, I would just like to credit all the amazing writers who were involved in the production of War Horse:

• Micahel Morpugo who wrote the original novel
• Lee Hall and Richard Curtis who wrote the screenplay for the film
• Nick Stafford who adapted the original novel, for the National Theatre of Great Britain's production of War Horse

War Horse the book (movie cover)

The Gathering

Rating: 3/5

Title: The Gathering

Series: Book one of Darkness Rising

Author: Kelley Armstrong

Page Count (hardcover): 359

Official Book Description:

     Maya lives in a small medical-research town on Vancouver Island. How small? You can’t find it on the map. It has less than two-hundred people, and her school has only sixty-eight students–for every grade from kindergarten to twelve.

      Now, strange things are happening in this claustrophobic town, and Maya’s determined to get to the bottom of them. First, the captain of the swim team drowns mysteriously in the middle of a calm lake. A year later, mountain lions start appearing around Maya’s home, and they won’t go away. Her best friend, Daniel, starts experiencing “bad vibes” about certain people and things. It does’t help that the new bad boy in town, Rafe, has a dangerous secret…and he’s interested in one special part of Maya’s anatomy: Her paw-print birthmark

My Thoughts:

      After hearing wonderful things about #1 New York Times Best Selling author Kelley Armstrong I decided that I simply had to find out for myself what all the buzz was about. So, when I noticed The Gathering while perusing the YA section of the library I decided to check it out. Perhaps I've just been reading too many classics lately but in my opinion The Gathering just wasn't that amazing. Now that's not to say that I won't read the rest of this series, or that I won't read any of her other books, but what's for sure is that Kelley Armstrong's The Gathering just didn't strike a chord within me.

     I think one of my main problems in The Gathering arose from a lack of connection to the characters. Yes, Armstrong did have decent character development and certainly went into great depth when describing the background history of Rafe (the love interest), but I just didn't form enough of a deep connection with Maya (the protagonist) to really understand her point of view. What I believe truly hindered my connection with Maya was the lack of foreshadowing to who she was. Though Armstrong did include a bit of foreshadowing, she simply threw in what would have been very intriguing clues, after she revealed what Maya was, which prevented the development of a truly intriguing mystery of her identity.

     I applaud Armstrong for creating a world in Darkness Rising that is completely removed from all of the vampire and werewolf content that most YA books are based upon today. I found it rather refreshing not to have to hear all about another girl's discovery of vampires, and was pleasantly surprised to discover the book was based upon Aboriginal Mythology (not sure if mythology is the correct term but you see where I'm going). And I absolutely loved the setting of the novel, which was located in a small, remote town in the Bristish Columbia's Canadian wilderness.

    Despite the fact that I'm not head over heels in love with The Gathering, I am looking forward to following the rest of the series. I'm curious to see what happens to Maya as her journey continues and whether or not Amrstrong's writing style improves! 

      

If you want to check out The Gathering for yourself; click on the link below!   

Amazon

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Clockwork Angel

 Rating: 4/5 

Author: Cassandra Clare

Official Goodreads Synopsis:

    When sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray crosses the ocean to find her brother, her destination is England, the time is the reign of Queen Victoria, and something terrifying is waiting for her in London's Downworld, where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gaslit streets. Only the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, keep order amidst the chaos.

     Kidnapped by the mysterious Dark Sisters, members of a secret organization called The Pandemonium Club, Tessa soon learns that she herself is a Downworlder with a rare ability: the power to transform, at will, into another person. What's more, the Magister, the shadowy figure who runs the Club, will stop at nothing to claim Tessa's power for his own....

My Thoughts:

    The best way to describe reading Clockwork Angel is, like having a scoop of your favourite icecream. Clockwork Angel is full of delicious romances and chalk full of heart racing, page-turning action scenes. I simply couldn't put it down and found myself rushing back to it the moment I walked away. I wasn't sure that Clare could manage to replicate the magic she created in the Mortal Instruments series but after reading Clockwork Angel I can say that not only has Clare replicated the magic of her previous series but in my opinion with the setting in this, the Infernal Devices series, she manages to top it! Now my main problem is that I can't wait to read Clockwork Prince to see how the unpredictable romance between Tessa and Will continues!!!!

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Clockwork Angel (Amazon Print)

Clockwork Angel (Amazon Kindle)

Clockwork Prince; the next book in this thrilling series:

Clockwork Prince (Amazon Print)

Clockwork Prince (Amazon Kindle)