Author Edwin Wolfe sent me an ARC of The Eyes of the Desert Sand (Chrysalis Chronicles #1).
Partial (because the whole thing is just too darned long) description from Goodreads:
How many parents would believe their thirteen year old son who told them that two vampires and a hooded stranger had tried to abduct him? Strange thing is, young Ethan Fox is convinced his parents, George and Betsy do believe him. Could it have something to do with the mysterious poem he wrote in his sleep? Or maybe it has something to do with his past, the past he cannot remember before his eighth birthday. Something strange is afoot, and it is about to turn Ethan’s world upside down.
Review:
If I’m honest, I didn’t particularly enjoy this book, but I’ve been sitting here trying to decide if what I disliked was really any fault of the book or just that I’m not ten years old and the intended audience. It is probably a little of both. Certainly, there were things I disliked. Haley’s character, especially, seemed only to exist in order to fill some cliche female role of adoring all things small and cute and nagging at the main character in an overly mother-like fashion. Both children, who find themselves in what should be a terrifying situation, accept their lot with such aplomb that it is completely unbelievable, and I found the constant references to the modern as distracting. It reminded me of an old childless uncle trying desperately to find a way to relate to and bond with his nieces or nephews…forced.
What bothered me the most, however, was that so very little happened. This book is 320 pages long. I honestly think there are 250 pages of descriptions and 70 pages of action or dialogue. Every character, mythical beast, room, food item, mode of transportation, item of clothing, etc, is described in excruciating detail. While this gives the reader a very clear idea of what things look like, it does little to move the plot along. In fact, it weighed it down painfully.
This is where the 10-year-old (or younger) comes in because, as an adult, I grew increasingly frustrated with the constant floridness that a child might not have. To a child, they may have been a source of constant joy and amazement (as I suspect they were intended). What I think this book would be best suited for is to be read aloud to smallish children. If read to children just on the cusp of being able to read a middle-grade book, those able to follow a story over a number of days/nights but not yet able to read it all on their own, they would go to bed each night with the image of amazing creatures in their mind but not be old enough to expect much in the line of a story. Even the dialogue, which I found extremely stiff and un-natural (too many shalls, musts and upons and too few contractions) would probably work if being acted out in some fashion.
When reviewing a book that was written for an audience other than myself, I always try to review it from the standpoint of the intended audience. After-all, it isn’t the fault of Wolfe that I’m not the right age for his book. But in this case, I got a distinct impression (though, to be fair, I’m not certain what gave me the impression) that, like Harry Potter or Alice in Wonderland, two books that The Eyes of the Desert Sand takes a lot of inspiration from, it was trying to have cross-generational appeal. So it didn’t feel right to review it solely on its allure to children. If I had to work on a numerical scale, I would give this book a 3 for adult enjoyment and a 4 for that of a child. We’ll average that out to a 3.5.
