Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Review: Emilie and the Sky World

Info:
Title: Emilie and the Hollow World
Author: Martha Wells
Series: Emilie #2
Publisher: Strange Chemistry
Publication Date: March 4, 2014
Source: I received an ecopy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
A Girl’s Own Adventure in the spirit of Jules Verne

When Emilie and Daniel arrive in Silk Harbor, Professor Abindon, an old colleague of the Marlendes, warns them that she’s observed something strange and potentially deadly in the sky, a disruption in an upper air aether current. But as the Marlendes investigate further, they realize it’s a ship from another aetheric plane. It may be just a friendly explorer, or something far more sinister, but they will have to take an airship into the dangerous air currents to find out. 

Emilie joins the expedition and finds herself deep in personal entanglements, with an angry uncle, an interfering brother, and an estranged mother to worry about as well as a lost family of explorers, the strange landscapes of the upper air, and the deadly menace that inhabits the sky world.

Review:
Emilie and the Sky World was a fun follow-up to Emilie and the Hollow World. I love the fun-filled. action-adventure feel of this series.

Emilie is a plucky, likeable young heroine. Her family troubles rear up in this book, with the re-emergence of dreadful Uncle Yeric and the introduction of her younger brother Efrain. However, Emilie doesn't let family issues get her down and brings her courage and quick thinking to another aether adventure.

In this adventure, we go up instead of down and the crew heads to the sky to investigate a disturbance in the aether. While the world is fairly different, the adventure follows a similar slant to the last. There are bad guys to defeat and foreign creatures to befriend. I enjoy the message in this series that even though people may be different (it this case very different!), we can still all get along and be friends.

I'm not sure if this book is officially classified as Young Adult or Middle Grade (I think Emilie is around 14), but it definitely has a Middle Grade feel to it that I really enjoy. There's no romance present, which I find really refreshing! The adventure is always at the forefront of the story, which I really enjoy.

The only slight negative I have is that the action was occasionally a bit hard to follow. With strange aether physics and multiple flying ships, it can get a touch hard to follow, but this was by no means a big problem.

Overall, I have really enjoyed Emilie's adventures so far and am excited for the next book to come out.




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8 comments:

  1. The action and adventure as well as plucky main character makes this sound great

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  2. I'm not a huge middle grade reader, but I'm always on the lookout for fantastic books to recommend to my cousin who's 14. I think she'd really enjoy this series, though she might get a touch hung up on the aether physics as well. I'm pretty sure I'd stumble a bit there myself, but I'm glad it wasn't a huge drawback. Fabulous review Megan!

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  3. I've really been wanting to read this series. This is one series I really want to own both books for my shelves; they are so pretty! I'm glad to hear that they have a good story inside as well!

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  4. I usually really enjoy Strange Chemistry titles and I think this series looks fun. I don't read much Middle Grade, but I will be soon as I have a five and three year old. Thanks for putting this on my radar.

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  5. I bet the covers of this series looks great in person. I don't think I'd read this, but I love discovering new books for my best friends' kids.

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  6. I haven't read the first book in this series yet, but these books definitely all look pretty cool! Emilie sounds like a great main character, although the action does seem pretty confusing. Great review :)

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  7. I remember that you liked the first book, so I'm glad the sequel ended up being just as good! I'm all about good MG reads with no romance, so this sounds great to me!

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  8. I haven't read this one yet (but I'm not too fond of MG,(or younger MC's, though I suppose if she is 14, it wouldn't be too bad.) but I do love the idea that this one being in a different world than the first. It never get's boring because there's always something new to the mix. I'm not sure if it's for me, but glad you enjoyed it, even though it seems it needed a little bit more of explanation to follow it a bit easier (I really get annoyed with ones I can't follow and have to keep checking things to remember.)

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