Beyond the Deepwoods (Edge Chronicles)

Rating:
Summary: Good thing it's just an introductory book (I hope)
Review: This is a book in which the character of Twig is introduced. Twig is your typical out-of-place, slightly-angsty children's fantasy character who doesn't belong where he is. We begin in his home with the woodtrolls, who have raised him from birth. We learn that Twig has always felt out of place and always troubled by the fact that the woodtrolls never "stray from the path". Well, suprise surprise, Twig isn't a wood troll! Twig's mother informs him of this and he is sent off to live with his uncle in the deepwoods, a place on the edge of the woodtroll village that is of course dark and dank and scary and...well think mirkwood from The Hobbit.

All-in-all there isn't anything very original at all going on here. I have respect for any author who can come up with lots of interesting creatures and places and what-not, and this author can certainly do that. I thik I saw another reviewer say something about how this was Tolkienesque or something. I honestly wouldn't say that it's even close. Obviously just about any fantasy story these days is going to be somewhat influenced by Tolkien, but this is nowhere near the same level. It is definitely a kids book.

Or is it? If you're a parent who is a prospective purchaser/checker-outer of this book for your child, be fairly warned...this book has more than a small amount of fighting, blood, vomit, etc etc in it. The author obviously wanted to make it very clear that Twig's adventures were NOT fun.

Which brings me to my next point. Characters. Aside from Twig, we really don't see any characters for longer than 1 or 2 chapters! Every chapter simply consists of Twig getting himself caught in the clutches/domain/dwelling of some horrible creature or situation, only to find his way out and...lo and behold plopped RIGHT into another bad situation. This isn't necessarily bad. I personally got tired of the lack of continuous characters (The banderbear he meets early on turned out to be a HUUUUUGE disappointment for me). On the other hand, if you've got a kid who gets bored with the pace of "chapter books", then this may be the book for them. There really isn't a dull moment in the thing. Twig is almost constantly running, fighting, gasping his way through some horrible ordeal. This doesn't leave much in the way of an actualy "Twig" character, but he is somehow still identifiable with.

Overall, I didn't really like THIS particular book much at all, but I finished it out to see what the ending would be like. And lets just say that it became very clear that this book was simply an introductory book. It doesn't seem like we meet the "real" characters of this series until the end of this book. Hopefully it will all fit in with the overall "scheme" of this series (I sure hope it ends up having one).

I hated having to give this book 3 stars...I would have loved to have given it 3.5, but it was definitely no 4-star book. I look forward to reading the others and I hope the pace slows down just a BIT so that we can actually get a feel for WHO Twig is and what makes the other characters introduced at the end of this book tick (as they seem very interesting).

Rating:
Summary: Not edifying
Review: This reads like a rather grotesque Perils Of Pauline. In each chapter our protagonist Twig -- an adopted human raised by wood trolls -- runs into another cartoonish, belching, oozing peril that he must defeat or escape. He's not on any kind of a quest; he's not looking for anything in particular. He just wants to be safe. Oh, and it would be kinda nice to be home again with his mother woodtroll, although he didn't much like living in the village. Eventually, Twig runs into the arch-bad-thing who pulls a really slimy stunt on him, and then -- via a clumsy deus ex machina -- falls butt-first into his True Destiny. I found it deeply dissatisfying.