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Isis #2
The Guardian of Isis
Years have passed on Isis, but life has gone backward, not forward. Under their leader, Mark London, the settlers have abandoned the technological knowledge of their forefathers. Upper Isis is now a forbidden zone, and the history of the first inhabitants from Earth has been replaced by myth. But one inquiring young man yearns to know the truth, and soon he gets the chance to find it.
140 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
213 people want to read
About the author
Monica Hughes
579 books117 followersMonica Hughes was a very popular writer for young people, and has won numerous prizes. Her books have been published in the United States, Poland, Spain, Japan, France, Scandinavia, England, and Germany. She has twice received the Canada Council Prize for Children's Literature, and was runner-up for the Guardian Award.
She is the author of Keeper of the Isis Light, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, which also received a Certificate of Honor from the International Board on Books for Young People; Hunter in the Dark, also an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; and Sandwriter, among many other titles.
She is the author of Keeper of the Isis Light, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, which also received a Certificate of Honor from the International Board on Books for Young People; Hunter in the Dark, also an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; and Sandwriter, among many other titles.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 15, 2012
The Isis trilogy takes a turn for the dystopian in this installment. The Guardian of Isis is set two generations after the The Keeper of the Isis Light, so those that were children in the first book are now grandparents. However, things on Isis have gone astray, with the settlers abandoning technology completely and living in a complex system of hierarchy and taboo. A few characters from the first book reappear and the changes are remarkable.
I really enjoyed this book, more than the first in fact. I loved the main character Jody. I loved his insatiable curiosity and I'm pretty sure he is a genius! Not only is he smart and inventive, but he is very brave as well. However, Jody's curiosity gets him into trouble, as new ideas are frowned upon in the Isis society, especially by the President.
I really wish that this book was longer! It's a quick read at around 200 pages and I feel like it could have been fleshed out a little more. Or maybe I just loved the idea of this regressing society so much that I wanted more!
I really enjoyed this book, more than the first in fact. I loved the main character Jody. I loved his insatiable curiosity and I'm pretty sure he is a genius! Not only is he smart and inventive, but he is very brave as well. However, Jody's curiosity gets him into trouble, as new ideas are frowned upon in the Isis society, especially by the President.
I really wish that this book was longer! It's a quick read at around 200 pages and I feel like it could have been fleshed out a little more. Or maybe I just loved the idea of this regressing society so much that I wanted more!
October 1, 2020
Yet again the publisher failed Monica Hughes by writing the entire plot of her novel on the dust cover. Seriously, don't read the summary, the book is only 140 pages. I found the plot line as expected with biblical similarities and typical development of a culture/community. Near the end it gets a bit dull and leaves at an odd point. The same cast of characters, but now 30+ years in the future of Isis.
May 17, 2024
Can't remember if I finished this when I read it as a child, but I hope I did, becsuse it's a very good young adult sci-fi story about not blindly trusting authority, going your own way, and becoming an adult.
"Jag har varit däruppe, tänkte Jody segervisst. Jag har varit där och kommit levande tillbaka för att berätta min historia. Jag har talat med den Glänsande och han har också tjänat mig. Jag har stått inför Den Gamla, den Hemska, och hon är vacker och hon har sagt mig att döden är en vän. Det är nog."
"Jag har varit däruppe, tänkte Jody segervisst. Jag har varit där och kommit levande tillbaka för att berätta min historia. Jag har talat med den Glänsande och han har också tjänat mig. Jag har stått inför Den Gamla, den Hemska, och hon är vacker och hon har sagt mig att döden är en vän. Det är nog."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 21, 2025
Floored by the direction Hughes took the story in this sequel to the 1980 YA Sci-Fi novel The Keeper of the Isis Light . . .
We rejoin the settlement on planet Isis two generations later, to find that Mark London, now an elder, has firmly established himself as president and forced the society to regress sharply into a dystopia where the "stories" of the elders are discarded, women are second-class citizens, the younger generations cannot read or tell time, and questioning anything is forbidden.
Mark has twisted his initial encounters with the inhabitants of Isis - Olwen and the Guardian - into mythology, demonizing Olwen as "the Ugly Old Woman" who is Death incarnate, and turning the Guardian into the "Shining One," a god figure demanding rituals and sacrifices.
The novel follows Jody N'Kumo, who is the grandson of the little boy Jody N'Kumo from the original book. Jody questions the rules and "taboos" of their society and is always trying to find ways to improve things, but rather than appreciating his ingenuity, his society considers him an outcast and he continually gets on the bad side of the President, something which may not turn out well for him . . .
I thought this was such an incredibly surprising and interesting way to continue the story! Hughes uses her science fiction setting to explore themes of how "religion" and "tradition" can be used to lie to people, oppress and exploit them. Heavy themes for a YA novel, and very well done. I wasn't quite satisfied with the ending, hence the 4 stars, but overall this was a fantastic read.
We rejoin the settlement on planet Isis two generations later, to find that Mark London, now an elder, has firmly established himself as president and forced the society to regress sharply into a dystopia where the "stories" of the elders are discarded, women are second-class citizens, the younger generations cannot read or tell time, and questioning anything is forbidden.
Mark has twisted his initial encounters with the inhabitants of Isis - Olwen and the Guardian - into mythology, demonizing Olwen as "the Ugly Old Woman" who is Death incarnate, and turning the Guardian into the "Shining One," a god figure demanding rituals and sacrifices.
The novel follows Jody N'Kumo, who is the grandson of the little boy Jody N'Kumo from the original book. Jody questions the rules and "taboos" of their society and is always trying to find ways to improve things, but rather than appreciating his ingenuity, his society considers him an outcast and he continually gets on the bad side of the President, something which may not turn out well for him . . .
I thought this was such an incredibly surprising and interesting way to continue the story! Hughes uses her science fiction setting to explore themes of how "religion" and "tradition" can be used to lie to people, oppress and exploit them. Heavy themes for a YA novel, and very well done. I wasn't quite satisfied with the ending, hence the 4 stars, but overall this was a fantastic read.
October 20, 2023
The other book in the series is good, but we prefered the first one. Here ut is more obvious that the author wants to explore a deeper theme, and sometimes it gets a bit too obvious. There needed to be a bit more depth for the antagonist and make it a bit more believable. But all in all, good book that both me and my teen daughter enjoyed.
June 13, 2018
2 1/2 stars
September 8, 2015
Second volume in the Isis trilogy. In this, the third generation of children have been born and a rigid, taboo bound society has developed in the colony that was established in the first volume. Survivors of the original colonists are labelled 'Firsts', their children 'Seconds' and so on down to 'Fourths'.
Jody is the youngest Third and finds himself a misfit, partly because of the enmity between his grandfather of the same name, who was rescued by the Keeper of the Isis Light, Olwen, in the first volume, and Mark London, Olwen's lost love who has become the President. Mark presides over a primitive society that he has deliberately made so, cutting them off from knowledge of who they really are and from technology, so that when Olwen's Guardian robot supplies 'gifts' over the years to fix things that don't work any more, such as the communication device, they are totally ignorant of the purposes of such things and instead revere them as artefacts only viewable by the favoured few. They now believe the Guardian is a god - pretty ironic when the first book showed how the colonists looked down on him as a robot - and London's machinations have worked so well that Fourths now don't even believe that the colony came from Earth, and think the stars are just decorations in the sky.
The river which once drained through sinkholes and emerged in another valley, has become blocked and the valley is becoming flooded, a serious problem as the rariefied atmosphere of the high passes is almost unbreathable to the humans who have been told not to go to those places anyway by the taboos Mark has created in the wake of his disappointment and anger about Olwen's true nature. Jody tries to alert people to the danger but Mark does everything possible short of murdering the young man, to ensure that his warnings are ignored - pretty illogical but we are meant to feel Mark's pride is too strong for him to unbend even for the survival of his people. It is only when he engineers things so that Jody has to journey out of the valley to seek help from the Guardian, that the young man finally learns the truth.
I wasn't totally convinced that the society would have lost all its knowledge in this time scale. Hughes tries to overcome this by saying that Mark has taught everyone to ignore what the 'elders' say about the old days, and yet he is an elder himself! Also why is Mark not able to e.g. change a lightbulb in the 'Sacred Cave' as they now call the cave housing the computer that was meant to keep them connected with the Guardian (after he and Olwen left at the end of the first book) - Mark could surely make out that he is the only one with a special relationship with the Guardian and therefore able to deal with his gifts. However, he is also supposed to have turned against technology: the only explanation given for this comes later in the story, when Olwen and the Guardian theorise that Mark has turned against technology because it was used by the Guardian when Olwen was a child, giving her various adaptations so that she could survive the thin air in the higher land, and be physically tough enough to be protected from UV and other dangers. Because of the Guardian's mistake in initially giving Olwen an all-enveloping suit to wear, ostensibly to avoid risk of infection from the newly landed colonists but actually to allow them to get to know her before being confronted with her different appearance, Mark fell in love with Olwen - as she did with him - but totally turned against her when he saw her without her suit, unable to see the beauty in her differences.
It is never explained, but presumably the lowly position of women, which Jody wonders about early on in the story, but which is soon dropped as a subject, is another example of Mark's vindictiveness - because a woman 'disappointed' him, he makes the lives of all women a drudgery. I wasn't totally convinced either by the ending -
Jody is the youngest Third and finds himself a misfit, partly because of the enmity between his grandfather of the same name, who was rescued by the Keeper of the Isis Light, Olwen, in the first volume, and Mark London, Olwen's lost love who has become the President. Mark presides over a primitive society that he has deliberately made so, cutting them off from knowledge of who they really are and from technology, so that when Olwen's Guardian robot supplies 'gifts' over the years to fix things that don't work any more, such as the communication device, they are totally ignorant of the purposes of such things and instead revere them as artefacts only viewable by the favoured few. They now believe the Guardian is a god - pretty ironic when the first book showed how the colonists looked down on him as a robot - and London's machinations have worked so well that Fourths now don't even believe that the colony came from Earth, and think the stars are just decorations in the sky.
The river which once drained through sinkholes and emerged in another valley, has become blocked and the valley is becoming flooded, a serious problem as the rariefied atmosphere of the high passes is almost unbreathable to the humans who have been told not to go to those places anyway by the taboos Mark has created in the wake of his disappointment and anger about Olwen's true nature. Jody tries to alert people to the danger but Mark does everything possible short of murdering the young man, to ensure that his warnings are ignored - pretty illogical but we are meant to feel Mark's pride is too strong for him to unbend even for the survival of his people. It is only when he engineers things so that Jody has to journey out of the valley to seek help from the Guardian, that the young man finally learns the truth.
I wasn't totally convinced that the society would have lost all its knowledge in this time scale. Hughes tries to overcome this by saying that Mark has taught everyone to ignore what the 'elders' say about the old days, and yet he is an elder himself! Also why is Mark not able to e.g. change a lightbulb in the 'Sacred Cave' as they now call the cave housing the computer that was meant to keep them connected with the Guardian (after he and Olwen left at the end of the first book) - Mark could surely make out that he is the only one with a special relationship with the Guardian and therefore able to deal with his gifts. However, he is also supposed to have turned against technology: the only explanation given for this comes later in the story, when Olwen and the Guardian theorise that Mark has turned against technology because it was used by the Guardian when Olwen was a child, giving her various adaptations so that she could survive the thin air in the higher land, and be physically tough enough to be protected from UV and other dangers. Because of the Guardian's mistake in initially giving Olwen an all-enveloping suit to wear, ostensibly to avoid risk of infection from the newly landed colonists but actually to allow them to get to know her before being confronted with her different appearance, Mark fell in love with Olwen - as she did with him - but totally turned against her when he saw her without her suit, unable to see the beauty in her differences.
It is never explained, but presumably the lowly position of women, which Jody wonders about early on in the story, but which is soon dropped as a subject, is another example of Mark's vindictiveness - because a woman 'disappointed' him, he makes the lives of all women a drudgery. I wasn't totally convinced either by the ending -
September 28, 2014
I liked this story better than the first one. Even though the parable-like nature of the story was a bit heavy-handed, I enjoyed it. This time we see how the colony has established itself, so much so that they have begun to mythologize and forget their origins. Mark London is president and has become completely corrupted by his power. He rules the colony arbitrarily and disapprovingly, fostering a complicated series of taboos that few people bother to question. It makes you wonder about the social taboos and traditions that we have in reality- how many are based in self-protection, and how many were a product of individual people's fears, biases and prejudices, long since lost in the mists of time?
Our hero is Jody, a curious young man who dares to question the norms on Isis. For that he is branded a trouble-maker. However, it is through his curiosity that he uncovers the truth behind the colony's origins. I really enjoyed his quest for truth, and I appreciated what the story had to say about our own history and pattern of behaviour in our own society.
Our hero is Jody, a curious young man who dares to question the norms on Isis. For that he is branded a trouble-maker. However, it is through his curiosity that he uncovers the truth behind the colony's origins. I really enjoyed his quest for truth, and I appreciated what the story had to say about our own history and pattern of behaviour in our own society.
March 24, 2013
As much as I adore The Keeper of the Isis Light, I am not a huge fan of books 2 and 3.
The Guardian of Isis follows up decades later where we find Olwen's original home has suffered a fate similar to Bilbo's scoured Shire in The Lord of the Rings. Spoiler alert, there is no satisfying punting of Sharky from these borders. I almost feel abused by the author. Yet this book is such an easy read it would be hard to convince Isis lovers to skip it.
Like the sequels to The Hunger Games, Isis 2 and 3 succeed in diminishing my appreciation for a stellar book 1.
The Guardian of Isis follows up decades later where we find Olwen's original home has suffered a fate similar to Bilbo's scoured Shire in The Lord of the Rings. Spoiler alert, there is no satisfying punting of Sharky from these borders. I almost feel abused by the author. Yet this book is such an easy read it would be hard to convince Isis lovers to skip it.
Like the sequels to The Hunger Games, Isis 2 and 3 succeed in diminishing my appreciation for a stellar book 1.
July 7, 2014
I liked the book but it felt like it was missing a book in between this one and the first one. Also the thought of the forced forgetfulness from the original settlers to the ignorance of the new generation I felt was too far fetched. In a small community as this were there are only 4 generations in total, there will be talk and secrets. Still worth picking it up and reading it though.
November 25, 2009
An orphaned girl on a distant planet is cared for (and genetically altered) by her devoted guardian. This is book two in which she is full grown and isolated due to her "differentness" from other earth settlers.
May 28, 2010
This one made me deeply sad. I loved the Keeper of the Isis Light, I loved, loved, loved the characters, and seeing what happened to them thirty years later was kind of harrowing for a kid. But a wonderful book, all the same.
April 23, 2011
Much more enjoyable thank the first Isis novel. This is the book where I took a much greater shine to the Isis story. It held this young, impressionable 7th grader's fickle attention from start to finish.
March 3, 2007
Unforgettable, loved the whole series, but the first one was the best. So poignant and revealing of human character.
February 13, 2016
a continuation of the events and characters of Isis, a few years further down the road. The planet Isis is as vividly real and beautiful as it is harsh and dangerous.
August 12, 2016
Not as good as The Keeper of the Isis Light, but a great follow-up that allows the reader to stay with this world. I suspect any reader would want more of Olwen, and you get it here.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 21, 2011
I loved this series, a definite keeper.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews