Until the Celebration

Rating:
Summary: Long-Winded
Review: The list of characters at the beginning of this book should give you a hint that the book is hard to follow. The main characters from the first two books of this series, BELOW THE ROOT and AND ALL BETWEEN, are back, along with a cast of hundreds. The two girls from different cultures, Teera and Pomma, are the focus of the Rejoyning, the integrating of the Kindar and the Erdlings into one society. The girls soon find out that it is no fun to be revered as messiah figures; in fact it puts them in danger from the splinter groups on each side who want society to remain as it was before the Rejoyning.

I really wanted to love this book, like everything else that Ms. Snyder has written, but making myself finish was a grueling chore. The plot is most likely too convoluted and politically significant for children to read. It is two hundred pages of all the minutiae of council meetings and political machinations to try and integrate two societies. Instead of being written from the children's perspective like the first two books, this one is mainly told by adults and details the boring grown-up concerns, like supply distribution. None of the charm or magic of the first two books. What a yawn! Only read this if you want a detailed account of integrating two superstitious, bigoted societies.


Rating:
Summary: A fitting finale to Snyder's great trilogy.
Review: Until the Celebration is the third book in Zilpha Keatley Snyder's fantasy (SF?) trilogy about a world where people make their homes in huge trees (which begins with Below the Root, and continues with And All Between.) All our favorite characters are back, and as usual, Snyder's book gives us no easy answers to the difficult questions of life. A beautiful and disturbing book.