Rating: 
Summary: Lack of Imagination?
Review: After reading "Retrato en Sepia" & "La Hija de la Fortuna" I was expecting another excellent book; unfortunately it seems that Doña Isabel already ran out of good material or was in a hurry to publish something new. DO not waist you time and money as I did...
Rating: 
Summary: honest and unusual, if a bit out of control at the end
Review: Alex's mother has cancer, so he is shipped off to the east coast to spend time with his grandmother, who turns out to be a reckless adventuress. She drags him off to Brasil, where they travel up the Amazon in search of a mythical beast supposed to be real. Allende writes with psychological insight and honesty. I also liked how she dealt with the language logistics in the novel. The climax got a bit too airy-fairy fantasy environmentalist for me, but not bad.
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Summary: the beast is a beauty
Review: Alexander Cold departs his family and ill mother to take a trip of a lifetime with his adventurous grandmother to find "the Beast." He is taken aboard a boat where he meets the rest of the team, including a famous anthropologists, a doctor, a guide and his daughter Nadia. As they travel down the Amazon river, Alexander discovers the beauty and splendors of the dense rain forest. Throughout the story, both Alexander and Nadia journey through the forest where they discover the invisible "people of the mist" who show them a diffrent world far diffrent from theirs. This is a fantastic book that will capture your imagination and envelop it with adventure. The descriptions are so vivid and mesmorizing, as if they pop out of the book and show each scene infront of you. This book shows Isabelle Allende at her best!!
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Summary: Michael's Awesome Review
Review: Alexander Cold, a fifteen-year-old California boy, is sent to stay with his grandmother in New York while his mother is being treated for cancer. After arriving at the airport to find no one waiting for him, he wanders through an alternate-dimension New York where no one will give directions to a polite out-of-towner, has all his belongings except his passport stolen by a girl around whom, had the plot not demanded it, he'd never have dropped his guard for a second, and eventually winds up at the door of his grandmother's apartment. Grandma Kate is a reporter for International Geographic, so of course she promptly takes Alex off on an expedition to Brazil, to track a yeti-like creature reported to inhabit remote portions of the Amazonian jungle. (This expedition is, of course, the reason his passport couldn't be stolen.) The Amazonian version is known simply as the Beast, and the North American version, i.e., sasquatch, or "Bigfoot," has apparently never been heard of, or at least is never mentioned. The Beast is also rumored to have a city, hence the title of the book.
Besides Kate and Alex, the expedition consists of two International Geographic photographers, a pilot, Cesar Santos, who's an experienced guidefor jungle expeditions, the pilot's twelve-year-old daughter Nadia, the anthropologist Ludovic Leblanc, Doctor Omayra Torres, and assorted other hangers-on and spear-carriers. After enough initial obstacles have been overcome, the expedition sets out up the Amazon, encountering wild beasts and wild Indians along the way, until the two children become separat ed and have an amazing adventure, learning what the adults are not worthy to know.
As you may be gathering by this point, I found this book irritating rather than enjoyable. Some of the problems, the ones involving speaking styles and word choice, may well be problems of translation. For instance, in the sentence "Wheeling in the air were birds he had never seen before, some as translucid and filmy as jellyfish, others as solid as black condors" on pages 260-261, the use of translucid rather than translucent is probably not Ms. Allende's doing. (The idea of birds being either translucid or translucent is another matter, but leave that aside for the moment.) Likewise, when Ms. Allende wrote the Spanish original of "My parents do not tolerate guns. If they saw me with this they would faint" (page 130) or '"And to think that I have deprived myself of this delicious treat for more than fifteen years!" he exclaimed at the second mouthful' (page 240, where Alex finally breaks down and tries eating fish) she may well have had Alex sounding like a normal fifteen-year-old boy.
Other things are harder to blame on the translator. Ludovic Leblanc is a cartoon western racist, believing and actively promoting all sorts of claptrap about the bestial nature of the Indians a nd the essential brutality of human nature, even when he has to create the evidence himself. He's completely incompetent, impractical, and quite impervious to facts, reason, or experience until the end of the story, when a single experience changes all his opinions and transforms him, temporarily, into a clear-thinking plotter with nerves of steel. Much is made of the fact that Alex is an extraordinarily picky eater; in fact he allegedly doesn't eat for several weeks of the expedition, because nothing's on offer that's on his short list of acceptable foods. We are repeatedly reminded that Alex is not eating. Why doesn't he collapse from hunger?
Then there's the Magic Indian. Now, some of the Indians are magical because it's an integral part of the story. Matuwe, on the other hand, is just magical once, when the plot needs him to be: "His sense of orientation was so extraordinary that, although he had never flown, he was able to locate their position in that vast green expanse of jungle and to indicate with precision the place where the International Geographic party was waiting." (page 333, when Matuwe returns by helicopter with a rescue party.)
More generally, except for Kate, Alex, and Nadia, all the significant white expedition members are either villains or dupes--and even Kate is a bit of a dupe. All the Indians are good guys. Indian culture is pure, connected to nature, and good, while white culture is unnatural, fake, bad. It gets tiresome very fast.
Besides the failures of logic and characterization, Ms. Allende is also guilty of a simple failure to check easily checked facts. On page 139, we learn this important fact about anacondas: "They didn't dare probe around too much, because those reptiles were known to travel in pairs, and no one was inclined to chance another confrontation." This seemed odd to me, and I did a little checking. Amongst the several sources I found that told me the anaconda is ordinarily solitary are http://nashvillezoo.org/anaconda.htm and http://www.extremescience.com/biggestsnake.htm And concerning the Beasts, on page 389: "...they're very ancient animals, maybe from the Stone Age, or earlier." Now, maybe Ms. Allende doesn't have web access, but I bet she has access to at least one good library. I bet a reference librarian could help her find out something about the habits of anacondas, or whether the Stone Age counts as "ancient" on the scale of biological evolution.
All in all, a disappointing and irritating book. Don't waste your own time, and don't give this to the younger readers it's intended for, who ought to be discovering what's fun about reading.
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Summary: THE MAGIC OF ISABEL ALLENDE
Review: Although this is considered a book for young adults, I,as an old adult found it as enchanting as all her books
this book takes us into a wonderful land, and,as in all her books a spirtual adventure
if you do not like fantasy,mystery or beautiful prose, incredible descriptions and deep feelings you would not like this or any of her books.
I found the two main characters were very well developed .
I feel I know them.They had far more courage and sense then most people I really know.
Of course there are the good guys and the bad guys as in any book, but this was not a cliche'
I highly reccommend the book to young and old
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Amazon Adventure Story
Review: City of the Beast is a magnificent example of Isabel Allende at her best. This book reminds us how much mystery is still left in the world. The story begins as 15-year old Alexander Cold departs from his cancer stricken mother and family the join his adventure-loving grandmother on a trip to South America. They, along with the rest of the group, search for the legendary "Beast," that is said to roam the Amazon. During his journey Alex befriends the local guide's daughter, Nadia, who has a gift with nature and languages. One night they are captured by the People of the Mist, and shown a whole new world beyond their own. There the two put to the test of the tribe, but with their totemic animals Alex and Nadia (or Jaguar and Eagle) have the strength to survive and save the People of the Mist. City of the Beast has mystery and action all throughout the book, but it does leave the reader at the end hanging with questions unanswered. This book is complex in some instances, but still has my recommendation as a fine piece of literary work.
Rating:
Summary: Not a good gift.
Review: City of the Beasts is being marketed as a children's book, apparently because its leads are teenagers, it is heavy on educational passages about the jungle, and its green theme is preached rather than developed. However, it is not likely to appeal to young readers. The translation uses academic phrasing rather than natural. The characters do not grow through conflict, they just add on capabilities as needed, and the ending hands off the resolution to grownups.
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Summary: Poignant New Series for Teens
Review: Fifteen-year-old, Alexander Cold, is given the opportunity of a lifetime, when his fearless Grandmother, a magazine reporter for INTERNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, invites him to tag along on her journey through the Amazon. Bidding his family and ill Mother goodbye, Alexander takes the chance, and ends up exploring, not only with his Grandmother, but with a Doctor, a celebrated anthropologist, a local guide, and his young daughter, Nadia. Their journey will take them where no man (or woman) has gone before, to document the legendary Yeti that just so happens to survive in the Amazon, and is better known as "the Beast." Under the canopy of the rain forest, and with his newly acquired friend, Alexander and Nadia are led on an adventure that will change their lives forever, by the invisible People of the Mist. A woman I know at the local Barnes & Noble has been recommending this book to me since it was released. However, it seemed like something that I probably wouldn't be interested in. Boy was I wrong. Being very interested in the field of cryptozoology, I found all of the talk about "the Beast" absolutely fascinating, and was extremely mesmerized by the descriptions of the rain forest. Alexander is a likeable character that will appeal greatly to male readers, while Nadia is a brave character who will appeal greatly to female readers. A must have for all ages, especially teens interested in adventurous YA literature. Great job, Ms. Isabel Allende! Erika Sorocco
Rating: 
Summary: not worth even picking up
Review: For an author of Allende's caliber, this is a major disappointment.
No sense of place or person. 100 pages into it and there was not one character with whom I could identify or care about. The professor is an unbelievably cliched stereotype. The environmental message is painfully obvious and annoying. The earlier reviewer correctly hit all the reasons NOT to waste your time on this book.
I DON'T recommend this to any Harry Potter fans, instead suggest Lloyd ALexander, Brian Jacques, Garth Nix, Philip Pullman, Susan Cooper, or Tamara Pierce, to name a few.
Rating:
Summary: Allende is no J.K. Rowling....
Review: I deeply respect allende but she really messed up with this one. To me, this is a vulgar attempt at a latinamerican Harry Potter-ish novel of adventure. You want to know what's even worse? There's a sequel out. I saw it and I couldn't believe it. I guess Allende acted like those rock stars that reach their peak and then think they can sell any garbage they put out....and sometimes do.
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