Tome Thursday: Broken Sky

Hello everyone!

It's Thursday again, so that means another ramble on books from my end. Initially, I wanted very much to write a blog post about Tess Gerritsen and her fabulous thriller/medical novels about female duo Rizzoli and Isles, but then I visited my local bookstore here in town and accidentally stumbled over books that I hadn't seen in a long, long time. Not since grade school, actually.

Chris Wooding's 'Broken Sky' is something you need to really put your back into if you want to find any decent results on the internet, because there's apparently a movie of the same name and so uncle Google gets all confused half the time, but if you're persistent enoug, you can get it done. When I saw the books on the shelf, I couldn't believe my eyes, since it's been at least fifteen years since their original publication, and to top it all off, the nine segments were printed in three volumes.

A must-have? I think so!

So Broken Sky takes us to a world call the Dominion, and its shadow counter-part Kirin Taq; drawing heavily from anime influence, it tells the coming-of-age story of twins Ryushi and Kia, who witness their father's murder and the destruction of all they once held dear, barely escaping with their lives. They then proceed in joining the rebellion forces called Parakka, an organization their father helped kick-start, to overthrow the cruel King Macaan, and his daughter, Princess Aurin. Through the story, we get to see how the twins shape their personalities, reach decisions, become different people but ultimately become what their parents would have wanted: free, and following their own paths. 

There are many creatures involved in the story, from dragons used for flying and advanced aerial attacks, to deep-sea monsters the size of Taj Mahal that can crush whole cities in their wake. There are pieced-together robot-men who can pass through any reflecting surface from one point to the other, mechanics who have replaced their body parts with mechanisms ...

And, through it all, the saga is controlled by spirit stones, inert, and colourless stones when first mined, but which take on characteristics and colour once they are planted into their bearer. They can range from simple tasks of helping the people they were given to with their jobs (like blacksmiths or drivers), or they can give amazing powers, like seeing the future or using kinetic energy harnessed from all around as the power-source. The more stones you have, the more powerful you are, but only the wealthiest can afford an upped number. These stones are inserted along the line of the backbone, and cannot be removed once settled.

The first photo isn't mine; the second is

I fell in love with these books when my cousin first introduced them to me (she was also responsible for bringing The Lord of the Rings to my attention, so she knows her stuff!), and I vividly remembr how we waited on baited breath for the last, ninth installment to be published so we could read it. Seeing these books again after so many years brings back all those fond memories, and even though the writing is sometimes quite simple, meant for kids obviously, I still enjoy each and every moment of the story.

There is currently a limbo situation for these books, however; there is no e-pub or Kindle version of them, because they were never reprinted, and the author has gone into self-publishing, but he has stated in his blog that he wants to rewrite certain things first.

So hopefully we get that, too!

Have you read Broken Sky? What did you think of it?

xx