Category: Audience: Young Reader

Nightfall (Keepers #6) - Shannon Messenger

7/14/2021

Date Read: June 16th, 2021

Final Score: 8 / 10 !

This was yet another LOVELY installment in the Keeper of the Lost Cities series! This was a dramatic improvement on the 5th book, mainly for how the installment actually matters on its own rather than simply as a stepping stone towards the Endgame.
The increasing complexity of how the adults in this series relate to each other is really becoming an amazing display of awareness that is a GREAT means of helping young readers learn to understand grown-ups as people rather than as magical-all-knowing entities who have achieved a state of 'completion'. Grown-ups make mistakes, and they have emotions that cloud their judgement, and they act in ways that seem irrational because you don't fully understand where they're coming from... It's something that takes kids a long time to understand and something that is explicitly commented on in this novel, discussed in great detail at varied intervals that allow for kids to legitimately begin absorbing the lesson alongside their middle-grade protagonists.
The plot twists developed in this novel are fantastic. It takes on several necessary new-turn developments without becoming predictable and still works in a good few deeply unexpected twists! I LOVE the new characters we get introduced to, and I ADORE the new characterizations of familiar faces we'd thought we knew.

The story has developed complexity to the point of requiring multiple threads of storyline ongoing all at once, and it times out perfectly with the plot-device of teaching the protagonists the nuanced lesson of needing to delegate tasks to keep their heads above water. We're just at the edge of how complicated a book can before it gets too confusing, but perfectly well managed to help young audiences keep all the details straight. It's becoming a REALLY good transition into Young Adult and I absolutely love it!

I will DEFINITELY be picking up the next installment ASAP!

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the Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

6/2/2021

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Date Read: May 20th, 2021

Final Score: 8 / 10 !

I have come to realize that I simply adore Amie Kaufman. I still think it's a little weird that she writes almost nothing on her own. but she seems to pick her co-authors very well and I absolutely love everything I've read with her name on it.
This one is no exception, in fact I might like it best of all I've read thus far!
First of all, it's a gorgeous world, richly imagined and deeply developed with intricate nuance and a vibrant liveliness that makes both cultures feel very real.
I did wonder about the rest of the world, because surely 2 tribes of humans cannot be the only cultures left on the planet, but at the same time, the limited tech of the one and the utter indifference of the other does very well to explain away the seeming smallness of the world.
I deeply enjoyed the conflation of magic vs technology and religion vs science here, it was laid out very well how similar the two sets of concepts are and why preaching science at someone is just a aggressive an impolite overstep as preaching religion at someone. While respect for science and for academia in general needs to be cultivated in the modern world we live in, accepting the working of science does not make you a better person on any account than someone who does not (and you telling them that they are ridiculous, backwards, and idiotic doesn't help the problem).

It's also only a respect for science in the barest terms if you cannot articulate WHY science ought to be accepted and followed in a manner that DOES delineate it from religion. (After all, if you can't explain how an airplane stays in the sky, how is believing that it will any different from someone believing in magic carpets or dragons?)Because the problem with religious dogma and psuedo-religious science is not that one is right and one is wrong, it's that one can demonstrably prove its concepts and can be wholly and fully understood by anyone given the time and genuine effort to do so. The reason people doubt science is largely because the people who accept it cannot explain it any better than a preist or imam or rabbi can explain the Divine. It's not only a problem of ignorance on the side of those who don't accept science, it's also a problem on the side of those who only accept science as a replacement for religion and understand it no better.
The PROBLEM, therefore, is an over all lack in nuanced education.
  I LOVE when topically simply love stories get at concepts like that. And this one looks at it explicitly and discusses it repeatedly.
  Sadly, it doesn't go into the fact that the solution is a total rehaul on the entire world's educational system, but still, even making the first statement is unexpectedly deep for a YA romance story. ^_~
  And the romance is fun, too! It's well crafted, adorable, and believable in every way... Even if the insta-attraction is still a little over the top and the connection the characters forge comes a little overly quick, there are environmental pressures and cultural reasonings that make such romantic alacrity reasonable.
  I saw the big betrayal coming from a mile off, and while I think it could've been handled slightly differently to make it hit a little harder, I really enjoyed the way that every character fully believed that the all things they did, even the very worst of them, were done for the right reasons.
  I am eager for the the next book in the series, particularly as the last chapter ended with an unreliable narrator dropping a hint that may or may not be a game-changing truth and I am CONCERNED. ^_~
But, I have to wait until January... *sigh*.
  Still, GREAT book, I highly recommend it!

  Fully appropriate for the younger YA crowd and as a transitional for the particularly eager Middle Grade kiddo!

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Lodestar (Keepers #5) - Shannon Messenger (Book Review)

5/27/2021

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Date Read: April 7, 2021

Final Score: 6 / 10 !

Yep, it's another installment in the Young Reader Epic Series Keeper of the Lost Cities and it's yet another example of why this series is AWESOME!

The best part about this one is that you can feel the characters growing up in it. Their eagerness to dive into a slipshod plan isn't haste and petulance anymore so much as it is a legitimate evaluation of desperate times calling for desperate measures. They still make young and inexperienced choices, but they're not just leaping to conclusions any more. And beyond that you can see how the grown ups are just people, too, scared and worried and not always perfect in how they make decisions.

It's very well done.

Also, the plot is getting more and more gripping without becoming too overly convoluted. There is definitely getting to be a few too many conspiracies to keep track of, but that fact is commented on and it's laid out that everyone has their own agenda, even within supposedly cohesive organizations, so I'm finding the added layers of complication fully excusable.

(Whether or not that stays true depends on how this latest twist plays out in the next couple of books, and whether or not an overload of yet more complications gets added).

This installment is a solid addition to the series, but on its own, there was nothing particularly notable about it. I didn't like or dislike anything outside of how we can feel the kids beginning to truly mature. Even watching Keefe playing darkside was neat, but not particularly gripping as the plot unfolded. It really did feel a little bit more like filler than not.

Still it was interesting filler and a very pleasant read. I'm definitely looking forward to picking up Book 6! ^_~

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Nightfall (Keepers #6) - Shannon Messenger

the Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Lodestar (Keepers #5) - Shannon Messenger (Book Review)

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