GRAN-SDUR: The Games by Jan Raymond

GRAN-SDUR: The Games by Jan Raymond

This is book 2 of the Pha-yul triology.  If you haven’t read the first one, Circle of Five, you’d most likely be lost.  This isn’t a series you can just waltz into the middle of. 

Now that the kids have spent over a year with Mr. Harris honing their special abilities, he takes them to Pha-yul for the summer to continue their training for the upcoming Gran-sdur.  Here, the children learn they’re descended from a race called Padimites.  Through their eyes and lessons, the author fills in the background of whom the Padimites are and why they came to Earth.  Their teachers paint a rosy picture of their race, and most of them look down at the mere humans they inhabit Earth with.  The kids take pretty much everything told to them at face-value, except Sam, the doubting Thomas.  If the Padimites are so peaceful and superior to humans, why did Pha-yul splinter into different communities and factions?

The kids become friends with some of the other children training for the Gran-sdur.  And once the games begin, it’s every team for itself.  Faced with betrayal and possible death, Sam, Cassie, Maya, Seb & Ryan bond together as never before just to survive the games.

There’s a lot of world-building in this book, so it’s slow going for over half the book.  But once the games started, I couldn’t put the book down.  There were a few questions I didn’t think were addressed, like the recessive Padimite genes.  What are the odds of the gene showing up decades later in siblings?  This story takes place in our modern world, so why haven’t the different communities of Padimites been discovered?  I realize they find the most remote areas to hide at, but our technology would find them.  If they’re using some type of cloaking technology, that’s something we as the readers have to assume. 

In my review of The Circle of Five, I criticized the author’s lack of editing.  It has improved somewhat in this book and I know she’s working at correcting her mistakes. 

All in all, I loved this book and can’t wait for the final installment.  Where are Seb and The Book?  I highly recommend this story for all ages.  I give it 4 feathers.