Friday, July 24, 2009

The Book the Blogger Read


Cryptozoology once again was able to sneak its way into the hearts of children's book authors. Roland Smith introduces Marty and Grace, a pair of fun-loving, and yet slightly flawed twins in his book, "Cryptid Hunters." In the book, after their parents are missing from a plane crash, the twins end up with their Uncle Travis. Soon after, they get dropped into a jungle by accident. So, in a fight to survive the perilous jungle, they stumble upon something that both Uncle Travis and his enemy, Noah Blackwood, are after.
In a way, it's almost offensive to cryptozoologists, seeing as how their uncle, Travis Wolfe, is a cryptozoologist and yet, he is described as a cryptid hunter, while cryptozoologists aren't necessarily hunters of cryptids. I also found that I couldn't really tell where the twins were from because it didn't leave any clues in the dialouge, so I couldn't really establish that part of their character which had irritated me constantly. Also, the book never really explains some of the strange things that happen in the book, like how a native of the Congo is able to use a shotgun, or how you could get over lifelong fears in an hour.
But, the pros of the book are that it was very action packed, so there was never a moment of dullness or a moment where there wasn't something intriguing being said. It was also noticed that nothing was written in the book as a space filler. Everything was relevant to the story, or was at least going to trigger something later in the book, or maybe even was going to explain something later. I thought that the characters were interesting and had a lot of depth. Not like some books where the characters are just words on a page and nothing more. All in all, the book wasn't bad, but it could stand some improvement.

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