3.5 Stars
Jeremy Lander was just settling down to enjoy his last
summer break when a family emergency forces his mum to travel and leave him
alone for a few days. Wondering how he can fill his time alone he wanders
outside in the sun and something very strange happens. At first he thinks he is
dreaming, but he soon realises he is wide awake and things are far from okay.
His body feels odd, his surroundings seem to have grown bigger and he swears he
can understand what the forest animals are saying! Faith, a Saloli prophet
looks at Jeremy and sees this human boy as her tribes saviour, with agreement
from Rust, the tribes chief and a little bit of magic Faith turns Jeremy into
one of them and is convinced in this form he will be enough to save the tribe
from imminent threat.
This was an unusual little story, Saloli are squirrels who
live their lives similar to humans they have a ‘God’ to worship named Valde
Abbas, they believe in a life after death. They have marriage ceremonies and
funerals and the story puts me in mind of ‘Wind in the Willows’ or ‘Bright
eyes’ with it’s humanlike talking animals. Our MC Jeremy aka Blaze is a teenage
boy who has been turned into a squirrel in order to save the Icefire tribe from
some unknown threat that the groups prophet Faith had been warned about in a
dream. He soon proves himself as an able fighter and is promoted from trainee
to fully-fledged tribe member within a few weeks.
Blaze happens along many threats and we watch him fight
foxes, eagles and humans as well as other things in this steady paced exciting
fantasy. I did notice a hand full of typo’s which I find in most books I read
and didn’t find them detrimental to the enjoyment of the story. The writing
flows easily and the plot if somewhat predictable is entertaining. Although
there is quite a lot of violence in the story the writing style and vocabulary
suggests this book is aimed at young people aged thirteen and over. We are left
with a cliff hanger that implies this is the first of a series of books
involving our Saloli friends and I recommend it to all young fantasy lovers.
No comments:
Post a Comment