TAKE BACK THE SKIES is a girl-hides-as-guy adventure with a steampunkish feel. It's a book geared for the Middle-grade market, which makes it sort of a hit-and-miss for the adult audience.
BACKSTORY
Catherine
Hunter lives a privileged life in Anglya. She has a robot servant,
gorgeous clothes and a top-notch education, but all at the expense of
her personal happiness, because being privileged in Anglya means she has
little value except as a baby making machine and tool for political
alliances.
With
a forced marriage looming in her future, she decides to run away, and
thus it is that she finds herself a stowaway on the skyship Stormdancer.
Catherine
becomes Cat and stows away aboard a skyship. She is soon discovered
although it's not known that she is a girl. The ships crew accepts
her/him as she proves herself useful.
As it turns out the crew, in addition to it's regular trading, is smuggling food and goods to the starving population of Anglya. What's more, it becomes apparent that something is tremendously wrong because everything that Cat was told about the outside world is a lie. And the children who were supposedly inducted into the military are obviously being taken to do something else.
Cat is furious about the lies and the suffering being inflicted upon her people and she inspires a full fledged mutiny.
**END of Spoilers**
As it turns out the crew, in addition to it's regular trading, is smuggling food and goods to the starving population of Anglya. What's more, it becomes apparent that something is tremendously wrong because everything that Cat was told about the outside world is a lie. And the children who were supposedly inducted into the military are obviously being taken to do something else.
Cat is furious about the lies and the suffering being inflicted upon her people and she inspires a full fledged mutiny.
**END of Spoilers**
Lucy Saxon
wrote TAKE BACK THE SKIES when just a teen (16), and I have to say that
the book is pretty darn good. In fact, I have no qualms with the
wordsmithing nor the voice, and I would recommend this book without
hesitation to Middle Graders looking for an adventurous read. Cat's
world is well developed and the love interest works extremely well.
For
adults though, there might be a problem --unless you are in the mood to
suspend that disbelief. The adults in the book, for example, end up
being directed by Cat, who is just 15. To be fair, she has special
inside knowledge which is vital to their plans, but it still rings a
little false in that there are few if any protests.
Lucy Saxon is an author to bookmark. I would have never guessed her age based on her writing. She is good. And TAKE BACK THE SKIES is a good Middle Grade book. Perhaps a little on the girlie side because of the love interest, Fox, but a solid enough story.
Pam~
TAKE BACK THE SKIES
(Tellus World)
by Lucy Saxon
Reading Information:
Page Count: 384
no reading information currently available
--sample pages and reviews available
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