Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Some of the people I know had bashed this book without sufficient cause, because the author sued J.K. Rowling over the use of the word "Muggles." Not being a part of the HP throng, I checked this book out and settled down to read. Eventually, I concluded that the lawsuit was needless. This book is bad on its own merits.
The essential plot is a postapocalyptic one, where bombs are falling on crumbling civilizations (which, weirdly enough, are composed of nobles?). First we're given a political run-through and a description of the Muggles themselves. Then we are told about a beautiful young noble woman named Lady Catherine, who sets her newborn sons afloat on the ocean. Helped by friendly sea creatures to Aura, the land of the cartoonish Muggles, the boys survive and are named Rah and Zyn. However, as years go by, Zyn becomes jealous of his brother. His increasing isolation with his band of hanger-on Nevils provides the central conflict of the plot.
This book never really decides what it wants to be - it reads like an "Early Reader" story stretched over nearly three hundred pages. Yet the descriptions of nuclear war, third-degree burns, radioactive mutation, and a mother setting her children floating in the ocean will scare some small children witless.
And to put it simply... it's just a terrible book. I knew I was in trouble when I read that Lady Catherine's nickname is "Cat." The talking sea creatures made me cover my eyes. The rapidly changing enviroments (the arrival of the twins causes Aura to become fertile again) require a major suspension of belief, as does the rambling storyline - we get pages of irrelevant conversation and attempted humor. But the humor falls flat, the dialogue is virtually impossible to follow, the songs intrude on the storyline, and the Muggles read like the creations of someone forced to watch one too many hours of kiddie cartoons.
And the character development is nonexistant - we get pretty much nothing from the POV of either of the twins or an individual Muggle. In following pages I found that Rah and Zyn had no real personalities - they either emanate sinister evilness, or a sugary goodness. Ditto with the Muggles, who seem to live in a saccharine idyllic enviroment, like mutant hobbits on illicit substances. There's even an attempt to inject gratuitous romance into it, where we have the (beautiful, elegant, dull-as-ditchwater) Lady "Cat" dancing and flirting heavily with her butler only a few pages after her husband dies. Uhhh...
The writing style is worse than mediocre. While author-addressing-the-readers can be charming sometimes (such as "The Hobbit") it takes a skilled writer to pull it off. Too often Stouffer's tone comes across as cutesy and smug. Her writing never makes us care much about what's going on, because she never writes in any sense of urgency or genuine danger - the Nevils are an example of this. Evidently we're supposed to find them alarming, but I had a great deal of trouble not giggling. And for the love of Mike, why do the Muggles wear baby-esque clothes made out of "gingham"?
FYI, I am not a Harry Potter fan, but this is for its fans: This book resembles Harry Potter in pretty much no way, except for the plotline involving adolescent boys and the name "Muggle." I can't imagine why Stouffer thinks that she can realistically sue Rowling over the use of this name. The hostility towards her is not the result of "big companies having power over people." If this book deserved it, it would receive a wide readership - but alas...
If you want beautifully written books for young kids, try Jane Yolen's Merlin trilogy, TA Barron's "Tree Girl," or Emily Rodda's "Rowan of Rin" series. This one is not beautifully written, not for young kids, and not worth it.
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