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A review by dullshimmer
Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger
5.0
Our family loves to read, so I was looking at some of the previous winners/nominees for the Goodreads choice awards and ran into the Keeper of the Lost Cities series. After looking into it a bit, it seemed like a good fit for our family. It's a book that we all really enjoyed and often had to keep ourselves from reading more, we were reading it to our daughter before bed so there was some need of a decent stopping point.
The book follows Sophie Foster, who has telepathic abilities and feels out of place in the world. One day a strange boy named Fitz finds her and reveals that he's also a telepath and that Sophie doesn't actually belong in the world that she's grown up in. This starts a series of events that leaves Sophie spinning and quite frankly that spinning doesn't really stop even in the last pages. She has to unlearn most everything that she's known, understand a new culture with new rules and information and technology far advanced than the human world.
I've already said that I enjoyed the book, but why did I like it so much. I think a lot of it was that I liked Sophie as a main character. She goes through so much in the book and keeps pressing on that it's hard not to root for her. She's a girl who has never felt like she has had a place and really that's something she struggles with even when she goes to "where she's supposed to be."
I also really liked the supporting cast, even though there were also times that I was quite unhappy with a lot them through the course of the book. While there were some that I felt were just a bit underdeveloped like Marella, Jensi, and even Stina, but overall I really liked a number of the characters like Alden, Fitz, Keefe, Elwin, and Dex. Again they still made decisions or acted in ways that made me upset or suspicious of them, but overall I did like a number of them.
Another interesting thing was that there was and remains an air of mystery over the whole book. It's not particularly clear who Sophie exactly is, why she was in the human world, and a number of other things for much of the book and even then all the questions don't get answered. With the mystery and her struggle to get used to a new culture and way of life it creates an enjoyable story that can leave you hanging a number of places.
If I had some complaints it would be that there wasn't really much of an antagonist to the book. There is a big thing that happens within the last ten chapters, but it kind of comes out of nowhere. You don't really even know who they are or what they want exactly by the end of the book. I also thought the elves were kind of harsh with Sophie, I mean she has no idea how to live in the world and they just kind of toss her in and expect her to swim. It seems like they should have been having her do a bit more to help her understand things or ease her in, but that doesn't really happen.
I also don't really a strong Harry Potter connection here, I know some people want to say this is a HP knockoff, but I didn't really feel that and that's even while reading through the Harry Potter series with both our kids while we've been reading this. Sure you can make some parallels, but that doesn't mean much as books both before and after Harry Potter have had many of the same elements. Personally I feel that Keeper of the Lost Cities has quite a bit different going on and is well worth a look, I know we really enjoyed it and are looking forward to reading the second book.
The book follows Sophie Foster, who has telepathic abilities and feels out of place in the world. One day a strange boy named Fitz finds her and reveals that he's also a telepath and that Sophie doesn't actually belong in the world that she's grown up in. This starts a series of events that leaves Sophie spinning and quite frankly that spinning doesn't really stop even in the last pages. She has to unlearn most everything that she's known, understand a new culture with new rules and information and technology far advanced than the human world.
I've already said that I enjoyed the book, but why did I like it so much. I think a lot of it was that I liked Sophie as a main character. She goes through so much in the book and keeps pressing on that it's hard not to root for her. She's a girl who has never felt like she has had a place and really that's something she struggles with even when she goes to "where she's supposed to be."
I also really liked the supporting cast, even though there were also times that I was quite unhappy with a lot them through the course of the book. While there were some that I felt were just a bit underdeveloped like Marella, Jensi, and even Stina, but overall I really liked a number of the characters like Alden, Fitz, Keefe, Elwin, and Dex. Again they still made decisions or acted in ways that made me upset or suspicious of them, but overall I did like a number of them.
Another interesting thing was that there was and remains an air of mystery over the whole book. It's not particularly clear who Sophie exactly is, why she was in the human world, and a number of other things for much of the book and even then all the questions don't get answered. With the mystery and her struggle to get used to a new culture and way of life it creates an enjoyable story that can leave you hanging a number of places.
If I had some complaints it would be that there wasn't really much of an antagonist to the book. There is a big thing that happens within the last ten chapters, but it kind of comes out of nowhere. You don't really even know who they are or what they want exactly by the end of the book. I also thought the elves were kind of harsh with Sophie, I mean she has no idea how to live in the world and they just kind of toss her in and expect her to swim. It seems like they should have been having her do a bit more to help her understand things or ease her in, but that doesn't really happen.
I also don't really a strong Harry Potter connection here, I know some people want to say this is a HP knockoff, but I didn't really feel that and that's even while reading through the Harry Potter series with both our kids while we've been reading this. Sure you can make some parallels, but that doesn't mean much as books both before and after Harry Potter have had many of the same elements. Personally I feel that Keeper of the Lost Cities has quite a bit different going on and is well worth a look, I know we really enjoyed it and are looking forward to reading the second book.