Struan Murray

Okay, so you can see by my rating of two and a half stars that I wasn't exactly over the moon with this, the last book in the Orphans of the Tide series. I think it just dragged on way too long and could have been a lot shorter with less character angst by Ellie. In a nutshell, Seth has headed back to the City to warn them that 1) The Enemy in Ellie form has almost completed the Eternity machine underneath the city which will harness all the evil/bad/depressive thoughts people have to destroy the world and 2) as part of the Enemies' plan, it has tricked the Queen of Shipwreck Island into starting a War with the City and she is on her way to attack them with thousands of soldiers. Of course, the Inquisitors only hear the second part and fighting breaks out between the people of the City and Shipwreck Island which is just what the Enemy planned.
Confused yet? Alice, Ellie's friend from the first book is devastated to discover that Ellie seems to no longer exist due to the Enemy having captured her and played on all her insecurities about her brother and mother's deaths. But she and Seth discover something....will it bring their friend back and will it help stop the Enemy's plan?
Very convoluted but I did finish it - a couple of kids at school are reading the first one so we'll see whether they stick it out to the end.… (mais)

It had been years since I read the first book in the series so it took me a while to reacquaint myself with the characters and work out where I was in the story. Ellie and Seth have left the City and are on a raft headed out into the ocean after being pursued by the Inquisitors. After some struggles, they land on Shipwreck Island which is totally unlike the City in that the people revere a Queen who is said to have healing powers and people do not seem to be as persecuted as they were in their previous home. But the enemy is still lurking in Ellie's consciousness and even when she befriends the Queen ( who turns out to be a young girl like Ellie) things start to go horribly wrong...
Story moves along fairly well although towards the end I found myself wondering what I had got myself into in my attempt to read this trilogy as it seems like a book with a message about good and evil and also about environmental damage and spirituality and self evaluation. Some of the characters are delightful though - I loved Molesworth the boy who owned the pub - great concept!… (mais)

Interesting novel in that the author never quite explains the background story and you, the reader, have to piece it together as you go along. Basically The City where the book is set is the remains of a once enormous city like London, and the only part that remains is that located on high ground; the water level has risen so much that it has covered the rest of the world. We are thrown into this world in which there has been an unusually high tide ans a whale has been washed up on the lower roof at the city's edge. Enter Ellie, our heroine, the daughter of an inventor who knows that dead whales can explode. She slices the belly open and out pops a hand that clasps a hold of her ankle. What? There is a live naked boy inside the whale! Then enter the Inquisitors, a group who have the role of stopping The Enemy ( an evil spiritual presence) from taking over a Vessel ( another human) and wreaking havoc on the City. The Inquisitors say that the whale boy named Seth by Ellie's best friend Anna is the Vessel and will therefore be executed the next day. Ellie must then make a bargain with the strange street urchin Finn to try and save Seth from death as she knows he is NOT the Vessel. Have I lost you yet?

Trust me, the book gets easier as it goes along. You could call it sort of dystopian paranormal steam punk but the story is catchy enough. I must admit though, I guessed why Ellie knew Seth wasn't the Vessel and who the Finn urchin really was a long time before the end of the novel. That being said, there were some surprise plot twists to keep me guessing. It seems to me that there will probably be a sequel after Eliie's discovery of the map showing another City and also the repair of her underwater boat meaning she could perhaps take a journey to it in a future novel. Fun book with a dark edge.… (mais)