Visit this writer in a few years
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This book showed some incredible promise on behalf of the writer -- how can one *not* comment on her age? Amazing. However her phrasing and delivery really lacks some experience and polish, and some of her characterisation will benefit with time.
A nice fantasy read that perhaps young adults will enjoy better than the older reader. It's enjoyable, but not quite on a level with any of the famous female fantasy authors one could namedrop. However, definitely visit this writer's works in a few years when her writing style and delivery have matured.
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intresting ideas but takes them nowhere
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felt this book was more for teenage reading, but do feel that even teenagers would like a good story and not what this is. Sorry.
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Tedious - intended for younger readers maybe
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I gave it a chance and read 100 pages into the book, but it didn't go anywhere in those 100 pages, and nothing even remotely interesting happened. Totally unoriginal, the author seems to have borrowed of any number of books and movies. Unconvincing magical undertones. Makes use of the most lame fantasy writing tools such as prophecies. The author is developing a fantasy parallel world, but it smacks of a childish Narnia type tale. Cardboard characters with no motivations. Might appeal to teenagers but certainly not an adult fantasy novel, if that was what it was intended to be.
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(Teenage) Kicks When You're Down
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Is it irrelevant...even patronising...to comment on an author's age when reviewing their work? Hopefully not : it would be difficult not to mention Jane Austen's youth if discussing her "The History of England" or, for that matter, Tennyson's old age when considering "Crossing the Bar."
Catherine Banner, we are informed in the introductory blurb to this fantasy novel, was 14 when she started to write it and is now 19 years old. The main characters are also teenagers, Leo, the narrator of most of the story, is a typical angry and disillusioned youth, reacting badly, even childishly, to the many tragic setbacks he receives. As might be expected, our author captures the teenage mindset very well, but to an older reader the long dwelling on misery can seem rather self indulgent.
The alternate Earth, connected mystically to England in our own world, is well portrayed and consistent. It is not, however, particularly dynamic or memorable; It is a similar world to our own and its differences are not illumiating to our own society.
The story of the Prince/Ryan which is told to us by Leo in the form of a dream or fiction is more successful, it has a development and a conclusion not present in Leo's own tale of woe. It is odd that when the two main characters, Leo and Ryan, meet, this meeting is very underplayed, and little is made of their encounter.
"Maybe you'll think... this a sad story" Leo writes at the end of this book "But it's not..." Well, actually it is, it is about the raw sadness of youth rejecting family, friends, religion. It's just SO unfair...
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A great read for teenagers
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Having never really succummbed to the Harry Potter fever myself, The Eyes Of A King is not really a book I would reccommend for someone out of their teens. If you are looking for something to keep a book loving teenager entertained, you could do a lot worse than this book though.
Its imaginative and whilst you never really imagine that the writer is anything less than the teenager the publishers seem so keen to tell you she is, it's a fairly compelling story which does pack something of a punch.
Older readers aren't going to be too enthralled and its difficult to imagine this catching fire like the Harry Potter stories. It's undoubted ambition is never quite matched in its execution, but it does enough to suggest that Catherine Banner could really come up with something special in the future.
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