Skip to main content

Gullstruck Island/The Lost Conspiracy

By curlyq
Gullstruck Island/The Lost Conspiracy (alternate title)
By Frances Hardinge
Macmillan Children's Books: 2009. 502 pgs. Juvenile fiction.

In this mysterious, tense tangle of a story, nothing is quite what it seems to be. In an ancient, superstition-ridden colony known as the Lace, young Hathin acts as an interpreter for her sister, Arilou, the village's sole Lost. The Lost are rare, sought-after individuals with the power to set their minds free from their bodies to fly with the winds, aiding communication between communities and providing news and necessary warnings. When tragedy strikes the village unexpectedly in a focused attack on all Lost, Hathin and Arilou are forced to run for their lives, fleeing from more danger than they could ever imagine.

This book will make you breathless and cause your heart to both still in fear and swell with inspiration. The characters are so vivid and real that you can't help but be caught up in the terror and beauty of this book. Hathin is the most marvelous character; she is both timidity and courage, and determined and faltering together. She is what we all feel--the struggle between our natural tendency and the need to rise above it and be better. Hathin, however, succeeds. This book is packed with intricate, complicated characters and is truly an incredible read. Although the first few chapters are slow and take some patience--you are submerged quickly into a foreign culture and all its facets--you will be well rewarded with an amazing, involving, completely unique adventure. Highly recommended for older readers.

CW
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Kareem Between

By
  Kareem Between By Shifa Saltagi Safadi New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2024. Fiction. 324 pages.  Kareem loves football and as he gets ready to start seventh grade he dreams of someday becoming the first Syrian American NFL player. Seventh grade is not off to a great start for Kareem, after football tryouts don't go as he had planned, his best friend moves away, and his mom returns to Syria to help bring his sick grandfather to the US for treatment. So when Austin, the quarterback and coach's son, offers to talk to his dad and get Kareem on the football team in the spring, if he will cheat and do his homework for him, Kareem agrees. Kareem really wants to fit in at school and he is desperate to find a friend, but deep down he knows that doing Austin's homework isn't the right thing to do. And to make things harder, Kareem's mom asks him to be a friend to Fadi, a Syrian Christian refugee. He knows he should stand up for Fadi and help him adjust to the new school,...
Post a Comment
Read more

If You Like...KPop Demon Hunters

By
KPop Demon Hunters has been one of the most talked-about movies of the summer. If you loved this movie as much as I did, you don't want the magic (or the music) to stop. Try reading these books that touch on some of the same topics and themes as the animated hit! Brick Dust and Bones By M. R. Fournet New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2023. Fiction. 247 pages. Orphaned Marius works in the family business--as their cemetery's ghost caretaker. However, Marius also moonlights as a monster hunter in order to earn the costly Mystic currency he needs to bring his mother back from the dead. As the window to bring his mother back begins to close, Marius's exploits get more and more dangerous, and he may have set his sights on a monster too big to handle on his own. Like Mira, Marius longs for familial connection, and his work as a monster hunter will satisfy the thrill of demon hunting for fans the movie. Where's Halmoni? By Julie J. Kim Seattle, WA: Little Bigfoot, 2017. Comics. W...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Sole Survivor

By
  Sole Survivor  Written By Norman Ollestad and Brendan Kiely  New York: Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, 2025. 255 pages.  This is a juvenile biography/memoire about the plane crash that Norman Ollestad survived when he was a sixth grader. The book starts off with Norman wining a skiing competition and heading home to play in a hockey game only to head onto an airplane with his dad, his dad’s girlfriend (Sandra), and the pilot so he could go and claim his trophy for the skiing competition. Only, the plane crashed and the pilot and Norman’s dad were killed. Then when Sandra falls and dies as well, Norman is left as the sole survivor from the plane crash in the San Gabriel Mountains during a snowstorm.  Fans of Hatchet or other adventure novels will love reading how Norman survived this ordeal. And they will be even more impressed with the fact that this is a true story and the person who survived and is still alive today. This book goes over all of...
Post a Comment
Read more