The night Kelsa buries her father, a boy appears. He claims magic is responsible for the health of Earth, but human damage disrupts its flow. The planet is dying.
Kelsa has the power to reverse the damage, but first she must accept that magic exists and see beyond her own pain in order to heal the planet.
Incorporating a blend of sci-fi and magic, Kelsa Phillips is just trying to cope after watching her father die from cancer when a strange boy shows up and tells her that the tree plague is actually caused by magic. The boy is actually Raven, a shapeshifting spirit also known as the Trickster. He urges Kelsa to come on a quest with him to move along the ley lines and heal the nexus points all the way to Alaska.
Hilari Bell has created an interesting tale based on Native American mythology. The beginning was a bit slow, but once the quest got underway, so did the excitement and action. Bell threw in plenty of twists and turns to keep me guessing where the story would go next. With so many people wanting Kelsa to fail the quest, she didn't know who to trust, or even if she could count on Raven telling her the truth.
While I did like the relationship that built between Kelsa and Raven, sometimes it felt as if Kelsa didn't make any decisions, and was relying too heavily on Raven to lead them. This was where I wasn't able to relate to Kelsa. Sometimes she just obediently followed him without any questions.
I also felt the ending was too abrupt. The quest was building up to a high-tension finale, bit it felt a bit rushed and nothing was concluded like I would expect from an adventure story.
That being said, I enjoyed the world Bell created, especially with the blends of magic which wasn't expected in a sci-fi novel.
Cover: The cover was interesting. I love the dual colours and the darker raven against the pale girl. A perfect illustration of the story.
Plot: 3.5/5 stars
Ending: 3/5 stars
Cover: 4/5 stars
Overall: 3.5/5 stars
Recommend: The Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Source: Arc received from Net Galley
2011 YA Reading Challenge: #5 of 50
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4 comments:
I feel like this is the 20th time I've seen this cover on my blogroll today! Thanks for showing both the positives and negatives in your review :) This is one of very, very few YA books I've seen that includes any kind of American Indian reference!
Hmm... the premise sounds great (I'm a sucker for magic)- thx for the review!
I'm not huge into sci-fi but you make this sound interesting!
I liked this book and definitely agree with what you said about the ending. It also seemed too ... final for me. I'd love much more story between Kelsa and Raven - but maybe that's just me being the typical hopeless romantic and wanting more out of their relationship than what might be there! ;)
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