CIRCLE OF FIVE by Jan Raymond
This
is a fun, fast-paced, delightful story of 5 children who suddenly discover they
are not like everyone else. They have
superpowers, each with a different ability.
True, this is a reoccurring theme in a lot of Young Adult books, but it’s
the characters and settings that set them apart. And that’s what Jan Raymond did with her
book. Each child has his or her own
voice and character tracts, all the way down to each family dynamic.
Out
of the 5 children, Maya and Ryan are the protectors of the group, and Sam, even
though the youngest, is their leader. And you can’t help feeling sorry for
Cassie as she takes last place, with her Mother, to her younger brother
Sam. The way her Mother treats her corresponds
to how Cassie relates to her brother, Sam.
Then there’s Seb, the spoiled, rich kid, neglected and looking for
acceptance. The Circle of Five doesn’t
always get along, as they learn to adjust to their powers and each other, but
they back each other up, without question, when danger rears its ugly
head. I figured out the villain almost
as soon as the character was introduced.
No surprise there, at least for me.
But then, this book was written for a younger reading level.
Sam’s
character keeps the reader wondering, are they following the right path with
Mr. Harris? What is his motive for
helping and training them? These
questions don’t get answered in this book.
Even
though I immensely enjoyed the story, I was taken aback by the poor quality of
the writing. It’s written in a simplistic
style, which was fine for me, but it’s all the needless empty filler words and redundancies
which will lead to my lower rating. The
words “that”, “had” and “gotten” are used over and over. An editor or a good editing program would’ve eliminated
most of these.
I
do recommend this book and I give it 4 feathers.
No comments:
Post a Comment