Child of the Air

by Grace Chetwin

Mylanfyndra and her brother, Brevan, residents of a mesa ravaged by ice storms in the winter and fire storms in the summer, are made slaves to the townfolk following their grandfather's death, but their strange ability to rise in the air could help them escape their fate

Genres: Fantasy

231 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1991

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

This book is stupid. I feared it would be too weird and that's the case. I knew it as soon as I read the summary, and when I started reading I was already wondering how I was going to get through this. By pg. 15 I couldn't take any more and I had to quit.

I had no idea what was going on. The strange names, the stranger setting. Leoia, podlith, shards, glairs. Cutwings and firebirds. I was like what the hell is she talking about? I could hardly picture anything and didn't want to because everything sounded so stupid. What really did it was the fact that the heroine basically killed her grandpa for a stupid game. She wanted to go up on a hill from what I understood of those weirdly named places with these plants that get really big or something, even though her grandpa said it was too cold and he would go when his legs felt better when the weather was warmer in a couple days. She couldn't wait and insisted on going then. When they get to the top he starts feeling bad and then during the night he takes a bad turn. All because stupid Mylanfyndra wanted to play a game where her brother is one god and she's another and they have to announce that they're going to chase each other forever, and her brother started running before they had said the words so she didn't think they did it right. Gven'bahr-brum (is that really his name??) had seen flying creatures shooting lightning bolts and that was the last straw. Stupid, weird, confusing book with an immature, selfish character who's responsible for her grandpa dying. No.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was distracted by the complicated vocabulary for things that could have been just as easily given ordinary names, and feel young readers would have difficulty getting used to that aspect of the story. The characters are well drawn, and although the story is not particularly inventive, the world is completely realized. This feels like an introduction to the world, not a stand alone story.