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The day the books burned in the plaza, Estrella’s life began to change. She caught her first glimpse of a different side of her best friend. She felt the evilness which had come up and inhabited her town. She saw a part of her mother that scared her the same way her grandmother always had.
Estrella’s town has always been divided. Years ago, the Jews we all made to convert to Christianity or leave. Some refused both, and were forced to the outskirts, living behind a gate. On the other side of town lived the Muslims, also not allowed too close to the Christians. But they were not quite as forbidden, and Estrella made trips to see them with her mother when she went to sell her yarns.
But after the book burning, things get bleak. Her neighbors are arrested, accused of being Marranos. Hidden Jews. Estrella is lost in confusion. These are good people who attend her church. Worse yet, one night she spies someone in their house…spying through a window she finds her best friend, Catalina, and her mother going through the Arrias’ things.
Catalina and Estrella have been growing apart. Estrella has feelings for Andres, Catalina’s cousin whom she plans to marry, regardless of whether Andres feels the same. Catalina envies the pearls Estrella was given on her sixteenth birthday. She envies her looks. Estrella begins to see Catalina in a new light.
But not a light that would make her believe her own best friend would destroy her family.
When the notices are posted in the plaza on how to spot a hidden Jew, Estrella grows fearful. Though she was raised Catholic, all of the things on this list are things her family does. She worries, but time passes, and things seem almost to return to normal.
Until Catalina catches her with Andres.
Her family is taken, one by one. And thus the dominoes begin to fall. She can’t believe how far its come, this evil that has overtaken her home, which no longer feels like a place she belongs, or wants to be. She struggles in vain to help her family, and cling to what little hope she has left.
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March 1st, 2007
5:08 pm
Book Review, Series
adventure, ancient egypt, fantasy, historical, juvenile fiction, scifi, space and time, time travel, ya fiction
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The second installment of the Golden Hour series, this is a much heftier story than its predecessor. Beginning with a short summarization for those might have missed the first trip to Owatannauk, Maine, there’s little slowing down once the adventure begins.
Xanthe, home without her twin for once, is busily beating herself up for having done so poorly in the contest that won Xavier the trip he’s currently off on. When her mother suggests studying to take her mind off it, Xanthe heads to the porch to do some math. Not long after she discovers something struggling in their pond. A something who happens to be he dearest friend, Rowan Popplewell.
Coming to visit with exciting news, Rowan miscalculated a bit and landed his alleviator (time machine) in the middle of the pond. The news: Aunts Agatha and Gertrude want their assistance with a special project. Collecting the goods sold in their curio shop. More specifically, obtaining rare manuscripts from Ancient Egypt.
No sooner has Rowan shared the news and headed back in the alleviator, Xanthe’s Nana calls wanting her to come visit.
Arriving to find a very different Nina than she met the previous summer, Xanthe is excited. Not only to go to Egypt, but to go without her brother. In fact, she’s a little too wrapped up in having something he won’t.
When Xavier later shows up in Alexandria to join the rest of them, Xanthe feels personally slighted. Her anger, and the unlikely chance of stepping out of an alleviator right in front of Cleopatra, lead her down a treacherous road, with dire consequences. Uncertain if they pull it off, the four children band together to return to the past, repair history, and restore the natural order of the universe.
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This book took me a long time to get through. The style is very odd, and hard to follow if you start thinking about it. If you don’t think about it, it moves right along.
This is the story of a father and daughter, both caught up in the legend of Vlad/Dracula. Paul gets introduced via his advisor in Graduate school when they discuss a mysterious book he found with his things one night while studying. It turns out Professor Rossi, the advisor, has one too.
That night, after their talk, Professor Rossi disappears, which leads Paul feeling compelled to find out what’s happened to him. Using the papers Rossi left him, he sets off to the Library to find out anything else he can regarding Vlad Tepes. Much to his surprise and dismay, another student seems to be studying the very same topic. While she seems wholly unapproachable, Paul decides he has to talk to her.
After meeting at a diner and sharing stories it comes to pass that Paul and Helen take off together for Romania, where they hope to glean enough information to form some new leads. From there on out, their paths keep crossing those of just the right people to help them, with a few hurdles along the way of course. And with each new acquaintance, they’re drawn deeper.
Their travels take them from Romania to Hungary to Bulgaria and back. Their discoveries are passed down to us via word-of-mouth, postcards, and letters.
Any vampire fan or Dracula fan should find a lot to like in this book. So long as you’re ready to give it your full attention, it shouldn’t disappoint.
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If you like a good puzzle, mystery, or loved The Da Vinci Code, you’ll probably enjoy this book. Ottavia Salina is a nun who enjoys a celebrated career working in the Vatican Archives. Her life is a simple and quiet one, until one day she is asked to help decode symbols tattooed on the body of a dead Ethiopian. No one will tell her who he is or what he’s done, only that she needs to figure out what the markings on his body mean. It is to be her main priority, and a Swiss Guard Captain, Kaspar Glauser-Rvist will be assisting her.
The mystery and unanswered questions are too much for her, and on a visit home, she has a nephew assist her with searching the internet, in the hopes of finding information on her dead man, which she does. Almost more than she wanted to know. She then confronts the captain with her knew knowledge, and finds herself dismissed from her job, and exiled to Ireland. Disheartened, she arrives in Ireland only to find important men waiting to take her to a plane to send her back to Rome.
After this dizzying turn of events, she finds that the Captain had gone to bat for her, insisted she be a part of his time, receieve an apology, and get her job back, before he would go forward with the project set to him by the Vatican. At long last, Dr. Salina gets her answers. Their dead ethiopian stole a piece of the True Cross. It was not the only theft of its kind. The Vatican wants to get to the bottom of these thefts, and to find the people responsible for them. This is the task set to Dr. Salina, the Captain, and eventually, their partner Farag Boswell.
Using Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy as their guide, the three puzzle their way through a series of tests set forth for aspirants wishing to gain membership in the oldest religious order in existence: the Staurfilakes, protectors of the True Cross. Their lives, needless to say, will be changed forever.
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Pacific Ocean, 1993. A Norwegian vessel heading out to sea comes upon a seemingly abandoned Japanese Cargo ship. Before searching for the crew, they send a party aboard to check for anyone remaining on board, thinking to lay claim to the cargo. Slightly further along, a British vessel floats, the launch-point for an underwater exploration.
Aboard the Japanese ship, the Norwegians find one man on the bridge, who looks as if he was boiled. In the engine room, doors have been propped open in order to sink the ship. In the cargo hold, all the automobiles are intact, one with its hood open. All seems ordinary. Until they begin to feel sick. The head of the group heads to the hold to check on a teammate who contacted him there, and find him dead next to the car with the open hood. Knowing he’s soon for death too, he takes out his gun and shoots the vehicle, vaporizing the ship, the Norwegian vessel, and the British one too.
Beneath the surface, the crew in the underwater explorer hear the bang and feel some shockwaves but cannot raise their surface contact to find out what’s gone wrong. Eventually their systems begin to fail, and it seems that death is imminent. At the last moment, help arrives in the face of Dirk Pitt, who with his partner Al Giordino, drove along the bottom of the ocean in their secreat DSMV to see what the disturbance was about.
After a harried escape from the ocean, the survivors of the explosion are left only with questions and disbelief.
The Government quickly forms a MAIT team, including members from many intelligence angencies, and the NUMA trio of Sandecker, Pitt and Giordino. The threat: Japanese underworld powers have devised a systematic plan to render most of the Western world helpless. How? Bomb cars. Why? They believe in the superiority of their race, and their economic tactics, and do not agree with the way melting pot countries are run. And yet the Japanese government and people at large have no knowledge of this scheme.
At nearly every turn it seems hopeless. The odds are pretty much insurmountable. And yet Dirk Pitt doesn’t seem to believe in impossibility. Even though he and his partner are over their heads and out of their realm of expertise, the duo still manages to save the day at every turn, including managing to rescue two kidnapped senators and the mastermind behind the entire Japanese plot.
Another interesting and somewhat frightening look at what the world would be like if extremism ruled the day. Definitely recommended for anyone who loves action.
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