ARA Review by davidmwpowers of Julu
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davidmwpowers
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ARA Review by davidmwpowers of Julu
[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, Julu.]
The eponymous Julu is a dragon, or whatever else she needs to appear as. She is like a guardian angel. Jirvania is a magical land, a land of imagination, where the great library offers a portal into whichever book you like. Stories, however, can be rewritten.
A boy at school tells Jack he is adopted, and he confronts his mother, who promises to tell him the truth later. But then a strange man who isn’t really a man tries to kidnap him and the girl next door, Mia — attacking their mothers. Running to his secret cave, he throws away the necklace his supposed father had given him in disgust at his parents' lies. But then the man or monster arrives, pretending to be his father. When Julu hatches to rescue him and Mia, and take them back to the kingdom of Jirvania where they are cousins, and Prince and Princess, he learns for the first time about his magical and royal heritage, and something of the dangers he must face.
The book is filled with characters from many other stories, from fairy tales to novels, although sometimes they are mixed up, like Heidi coming from Sweden instead of Switzerland; and sometimes they are real people, like authors, presidents and prime ministers. Each chapter also starts with a delightful quote from a well-known author or historical figure, providing also a helpful time alert and location, usually with dates both in our world or the world beyond, as well as Jirvana’s.
The time alerts are essential as the plot jumps around in time, and character go back and forth in time and can even modify events — or monitor two timelines at once in the case of Guardian Karel, although it is very confusing for him. As well as the explicit time jumps, we also get some retrospectives (some of them quite unnecessary), which all told I found quite confusing at times.
There is no explicit swearing or profanity, although there is the rare occasion when a disguised swear word is used. Generally, the work is well edited, although there are some awkward phrases and the odd error or anomaly. Some things were just odd (like a meal that doesn’t get cooked on the sabbath, and hating the sabbath; like evil power being described as an electrical charge; like finding a crossbow and shooting three ogres before they can even move, with no accounting for the time and effort to reload and recock).
One particularly annoying thing that occurs frequently is quoted dialog from one speaker being broken randomly (without reopening the quotation mark). Conversely, several times we have quoted dialogue from two people within the same paragraph, and with nothing to signal the change of speaker.
The best part of the book is the descriptions of the world and the well-characterized magical animals. The bad guys and monsters are really nasty and quite well depicted, but I found it hard to understand their motivations in most cases, although in one case the path to corruption was believably portrayed.
Overall, the story and characters were pretty good. However, the saltatory manner of telling the story was confusing. I also found it rather heavy going in places and felt the book was overly long (particularly for the target 9–14 year-old age group). The use of language was sometimes very good and sometimes not so good. And in the end the book just stopped, without a satisfactory completion of a major arc.
So I am not inclined to look for the next book, and am awarding Julu a middle-of-the-road 3 out of 5 stars. I’m not sure that it will really appeal to 9 to 14 year-olds so much as much older readers who will appreciate all the literary and historical references of yesteryear who might get a kick out of oblique references to a character or an author.
***
View Julu on Bookshelves
The eponymous Julu is a dragon, or whatever else she needs to appear as. She is like a guardian angel. Jirvania is a magical land, a land of imagination, where the great library offers a portal into whichever book you like. Stories, however, can be rewritten.
A boy at school tells Jack he is adopted, and he confronts his mother, who promises to tell him the truth later. But then a strange man who isn’t really a man tries to kidnap him and the girl next door, Mia — attacking their mothers. Running to his secret cave, he throws away the necklace his supposed father had given him in disgust at his parents' lies. But then the man or monster arrives, pretending to be his father. When Julu hatches to rescue him and Mia, and take them back to the kingdom of Jirvania where they are cousins, and Prince and Princess, he learns for the first time about his magical and royal heritage, and something of the dangers he must face.
The book is filled with characters from many other stories, from fairy tales to novels, although sometimes they are mixed up, like Heidi coming from Sweden instead of Switzerland; and sometimes they are real people, like authors, presidents and prime ministers. Each chapter also starts with a delightful quote from a well-known author or historical figure, providing also a helpful time alert and location, usually with dates both in our world or the world beyond, as well as Jirvana’s.
The time alerts are essential as the plot jumps around in time, and character go back and forth in time and can even modify events — or monitor two timelines at once in the case of Guardian Karel, although it is very confusing for him. As well as the explicit time jumps, we also get some retrospectives (some of them quite unnecessary), which all told I found quite confusing at times.
There is no explicit swearing or profanity, although there is the rare occasion when a disguised swear word is used. Generally, the work is well edited, although there are some awkward phrases and the odd error or anomaly. Some things were just odd (like a meal that doesn’t get cooked on the sabbath, and hating the sabbath; like evil power being described as an electrical charge; like finding a crossbow and shooting three ogres before they can even move, with no accounting for the time and effort to reload and recock).
One particularly annoying thing that occurs frequently is quoted dialog from one speaker being broken randomly (without reopening the quotation mark). Conversely, several times we have quoted dialogue from two people within the same paragraph, and with nothing to signal the change of speaker.
The best part of the book is the descriptions of the world and the well-characterized magical animals. The bad guys and monsters are really nasty and quite well depicted, but I found it hard to understand their motivations in most cases, although in one case the path to corruption was believably portrayed.
Overall, the story and characters were pretty good. However, the saltatory manner of telling the story was confusing. I also found it rather heavy going in places and felt the book was overly long (particularly for the target 9–14 year-old age group). The use of language was sometimes very good and sometimes not so good. And in the end the book just stopped, without a satisfactory completion of a major arc.
So I am not inclined to look for the next book, and am awarding Julu a middle-of-the-road 3 out of 5 stars. I’m not sure that it will really appeal to 9 to 14 year-olds so much as much older readers who will appreciate all the literary and historical references of yesteryear who might get a kick out of oblique references to a character or an author.
***
View Julu on Bookshelves
