Prospero's Children - Jan Siegel
Blurb:
A mysterious, isolated house awaits sixteen-year-old Fern and her brother Will for the summer holidays. As the old house reveals its secrets, their familiar world starts to fracture, giving access to a magical and corrupt land destroyed thousands of years ago.
For hidden in the house is a talisman which has been sought by the forces of good and evil for millennia. And only someone possessed of the Gift can use it.
Soon, Fern finds herself being courted by the enigmatic wanderer, Ragginbone, and the sinister art-dealer, Javier Holt, who know that she has the Gift. Both want her to find the talisman, and use it to unlock the door, but what awaits her on the other side...?
This was an interesting story but I found it hard to read because the author used some really long words and I almost feel that she over-described everything. It gave the story a non-simplistic feel and bored me in parts. I also felt that towards the end, the author wittled on a bit and could have ended it sooner. The story was divided into two sections, one when Fern is in the present time and looking for the key, and the second when she goes back in time to Atlantis. I preferred the first part because it had more of a sense of adventure than the other. It also took me a while to get my head around the second part because it almost started again where she thought she had lived another life that she actually hadn't. As the story went progressed, Fern changed. At the start of the book she was reserved and it almost felt like she had matured too quickly because she didn't have a mother. She herself commented that her father needed somebody sensible around to make the decisions. At the beginning she looked down upon her younger brother as though he should rein in his imagination but as they find themselves caught in the spider's web of the story with no way to get out, they become closer and rely on each other more than they did. At the end of the first part she has changed so much because she has let her imagination run free like it should when you are that age. She realises that she was wrong to think that mythical creatures and magic are fictional and she admits that. At the beginning she is self-reliant and consults only herself, but her change in character leads her to be more reliant on others and more trusting. In the second part to this story, when she is in Atlantis, she again changes and this is what confused me I think. When she has an argument with Raf about staying and going she doesn't do much to defend herself from him telling her that she is stupid for thinking that she can do this alone. She just quietly sits there without changing her mind. In the first part of the story, I would have expected her to take a stand in her own defence and this change in character made me wonder whether it was the same girl in the first and second parts. She was still sure of herself but her mannerisms were different. Halfway through the second part where she is trying to remember her name made me realise that she isn't sure of much in this new world and therefore this is why she isn't as aggressive in her defence as she would have been in the first part. This book showed the change in character as the plot progresses but I think that the author made it too wordy and therefore made it hard to read. I would recommend this book to avid readers that don't find it hard to get through a 400 page book, because they are the ones more likely to finish it.
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