Warriors of Alavna

Rating:
Summary: one of the best modern novels for 9 + but...
Review: Be warned, this brilliant and thrilling novel is VERY violent. If you have the kind of child who finds gore distressing, they could be in for a few nightmares. But let's hope not, for this time-travel tale into a parallel past, in which the Romans (or Ravens) are the baddies and the wild Cetlic Combrogii the goodies is fantastically vivid and exciting.
NM Browne's two teenaged heroes could not be more different, but you come to care passionately about them. Dan is super-cool - great at sports, clever, popular. Ursula is a hulking, overweight 6ft sulker whom nobody at school likes. When they're transported back in time, however, both find themselves with strange powers. Dan turns Berserker, capable of killing ten men in so many seconds (Browne describes this marvellously, so that you feel his fierce joy, then his terrified remorse.) Ursula can do magic. But first, they are captured by the Combrogii, whose princess/Druidess has brought them "through the Veil" to help a dying tribe. They have to train, fight, survive and change out of all recognition - and even then, only the legend of the lost legion of the Ninth (which Rosemary Sutcliffe also used for her best-selling novel)can save them.
Three people in my family, ranging from my husband to my 9 year old daughter have been absolutely hooked by the fusion of real Celtic/Roman in Britain history, myth of Macsen and Browne's insight into the way modern teenagers think and feel. The contrast between the twenty-first century and pre-Christian Britain made very funny, but it's the passionate conviction that thrills. There's also a sequel, Warriors Of Camlann, which is also excellent, using the myth of King Arthur.

Rating:
Summary: one of the best modern novels for 9 + but...
Review: Be warned, this brilliant and thrilling novel is VERY violent. If you have the kind of child who finds gore distressing, they could be in for a few nightmares. But let's hope not, for this time-travel tale into a parallel past, in which the Romans (or Ravens) are the baddies and the wild Cetlic Combrogii the goodies is fantastically vivid and exciting.
NM Browne's two teenaged heroes could not be more different, but you come to care passionately about them. Dan is super-cool - great at sports, clever, popular. Ursula is a hulking, overweight 6ft sulker whom nobody at school likes. When they're transported back in time, however, both find themselves with strange powers. Dan turns Berserker, capable of killing ten men in so many seconds (Browne describes this marvellously, so that you feel his fierce joy, then his terrified remorse.) Ursula can do magic. But first, they are captured by the Combrogii, whose princess/Druidess has brought them "through the Veil" to help a dying tribe. They have to train, fight, survive and change out of all recognition - and even then, only the legend of the lost legion of the Ninth (which Rosemary Sutcliffe also used for her best-selling novel)can save them.
Three people in my family, ranging from my husband to my 9 year old daughter have been absolutely hooked by the fusion of real Celtic/Roman in Britain history, myth of Macsen and Browne's insight into the way modern teenagers think and feel. The contrast between the twenty-first century and pre-Christian Britain made very funny, but it's the passionate conviction that thrills. There's also a sequel, Warriors Of Camlann, which is also excellent, using the myth of King Arthur.

Rating:
Summary: I can't believe a publisher accepted this manuscript
Review: I'm finding it hard to believe any good publisher accepted this book. Of course, I have to believe the evidence of my own eyes! But if Bloomsbury wanted another Harry Potter they could have done a lot better by digging further into their slush piles. Warriors of Alavna is not just bad fantasy but plain bad writing. It reads like someone's first attempt at writing a novel.

The book's beginning--'Dan watched with horror as Ursula was swallowed by the yellow mist'--immediately rings bells of alarm in the mind of discerning readers (who want to FEEL the horror with Dan, not be told about it) and things don't get any better as the chapter progresses. Editors are always telling beginner writers to 'show, not tell!' So why was the author of Warriors of Alavna, whose style is very much that of a beginner but who might have landed up writing a good book if forced to rewrite, not told to rework this scene so readers could feel Dan's horror and (as told later in the chapter) share Ursula's hurt at Dan's jokes about her height and weight--the supposed reason for her running away from him into the yellow mist?

The short sentences (presumably deliberately short to grab as big a share as possible of the Harry Potter market) are neither simple nor elegant--just downright choppy and dull. There are also too many run-on sentences. There shouldn't be ANY. Unlike incomplete (and even one-word) sentences, run-on sentneces serve no purpose at all. And I became so tired of reading the sentence, 'She was very afraid.' I didn't want to be told the character was afraid; I wanted to FEEL the fear.

I had to force myself to finish Warriors of Alavna, if only to find out if the structure and plot were as bad as the unbearably dreary syntax. The clumsy opening scenes led me to expect they would be. Writers (even new ones) normally work harder on the first chapter of a book than on almost any other.

If your children are fantasy fans do them a favour and buy them only the best. They're YOUR children, so surely they deserve the best. Ask the advice of the children's librarian at your local library. Or look for something by Diana Wynne Jones, Geraldine McCaughrean, Susan Cooper, Susan Price, Lloyd Alexander, Garth Nix, Sherryl Jordan (to name a mere handful of top fantasy writers for young people).