Hello everyone!
Tonight's choice is an OLD one.
Like, at least twenty years old.
I first read these books when I was about the age of the protagonists within them, so I suppose I definitely felt a certain way about the story as a whole, but now that I'm older, I wanted to sit down and have another go at them to see just what, if anything, I might see differently.
... Also, I just wanted to go back into some awesome writing.
Without further ado, let's just hop straight into it, shall we?
Make sure you've got your passport and you've gotten all your shots, because we're headed down the Amazon river and meeting some very, very indigenous peoples.
Then we're swerving right into City of the Beasts.
As I don't have anything from this author on my book yet, there aren't any links down at the bottom.
Isabel Allende is one of those writers that you can very easily sleep on, but her style is BEAUTIFUL and artistic, and she also writes about certain problems really, really thoughtfully and well.
City of the Beasts introduces us to Alexander, Alex for short, whose mother has cancer and whose family seems to be falling apart because of it. In an effort to try and heal her, she has to go to Texas for treatments, which means Alex's sisters are going to stay with their maternal grandparents for a while, but Alex is going to his paternal grandmother, Kate.
Now, Kate is an explorer and adventurer, and she doesn't even pick her grandson up from the airport in NYC, forcing him to make his way over on his own. He gets robbed, but ends up safe and sound, and together they board a flight to South America, because his grandmother is tagging along a National Geographic expedition to search out the "Yeti of the Amazon", known locally only as the Beast.
Oh, and also, the thing smells like a sewer and can apparently shred an adult from the inside out, natch.
Initially wary and picky about everything, Alex slowly adapts and adjusts when thrust into this new world, with the help of teenage Nadia, the daughter of their local guide. Having obtained boats and other equipment from a rich guy who's a walking, talking red flag right off the page, the team sets out to try and reach an indigenous people that lives deep in the Amazon wilderland.
Their task is relatively simple, or seems so: with a doctor accompanying them, Omarya, they want to inoculate the locals so that they won't accidentally die out upon further contact with other ethnicities (like, say, if a Caucasian suddenly sneezed and they didn't gave a common cold there with the locals? Game over).
They find no sign of the Beast, but Alex and Nadia do meet with the "people of the fog" who suddenly pop up out of nowhere to have a look at just the two of them. They're also the only two actively suspicious that something fishy's going on with the expedition, initially attributing it to one of the men snooping around the vaccines, but later learning that Omarya might just be the secret lover of their benefactor? What gives there??
Considering she seems all for the people and the guy is all about buying land and bringing roads and whatnot into the rainforest, you wouldn't be able to tell, but when the kids get taken by the people of the fog, they learn that their time is running out.
The locals' that is.
Civilization is creeping closer and closer, and they've managed to evade it by basically turning themselves invisible, and with the help of - you guessed it - the Beasts, who they call their gods.
Alex and Nadia guess they might be some prehistoric creature that simply never developed further and, because it lives in such a remote place, nothing and no one ever touched it, until now. Tasked with helping the people of the fog conquer this situation, the kids are taken to the home of the Gods, from where they learn a small ecosystem exists.
The Indians (as stated in-book, before such terms were looked at and changed) keep the Beasts safe, and the Beasts keep the local lore, as they can live for hundreds of years.
Finding their spirit animals - a jaguar for Alex and eagle for Nadia - the two then seek what they desire most: for Nadia, it's three priceless diamonds, and for Alex, the healing waters of the place, to take to his mother.
To obtain these, each must leave behind something of great value to them, and once successful, they return to find the expedition has finally caught up with them.
That's when things REALLY get interesting.
Turns out, the good doctor? She hasn't really been vaccinating people. She's been secretly giving them deadly strains of certain diseases so entire tribes died out, and her lover could easily swoop in on the land and develop it.
In the ensuing fight, her lover gets smacked over the head, a few people die, but the expedition manages to turn the tables to survive long enough for the Beasts to come finish the job and set them free. Then, Nadia gives the diamonds to Alex so he and his grandmother can advocate for the people of the fog, and the world explorer who initially started this whole thing looking for the Beasts swears he'll try and make this a good situation by convincing the world to safeguard these areas, rather than take and change them.
And that's where we leave off!
Wonderfully descriptive and colourful, the first book in the trilogy does a great job introducing us to the characters we'll be following for the rest of the story, and the author also manages to paint a vivid picture of the Amazon and its surround.
There's mythology, mysticism, and a lot of curiosity, but all done in a very thoughtful way, so I highly suggest reading this.
You won't be sorry!
Tune in next week for book two, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon.
xx
*image not mine
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