Eden Unger Bowditch

The Ravens of Solemano is the second book in The Young Inventors Guild series. As such, I expected it to be weaker than the first one, The Atomic Weight of Secrets, which earned four stars from me. But, on the other hand, I didn't expect it to be this hot mess.

The plot doesn't advance that much. However, we learn a bit more about the mysterious men in black. The evil Komar Romak is just as evil, but we learn a little more about him. Miss Brett, the children's teacher, is just as sweet. We learn a bit more about the children. We learn their special things have some sort of power. This advancement took well over 400 pages that I forced myself to read.

Forced, you ask? Yes, forced. I proofread for a living; I don't like having to do so when reading for enjoyment. The Kindle version had numerous typos. The beginning word of some sentences wasn't capitalized. Too many ending sentences of paragraphs ended with a comma, leaving me to wonder if something got left out. Finally, I decided that since a period would have ended the sentence, it was just a typo. But those errors happened so frequently that I was annoyed. The book wasn't fun to read. The highlight was the appearance of Tesla, but even he was mysterious and a bit annoying.

I cannot recommend this book to anyone who cares about writing. At best, the story was okay, earning the story three stars. Unfortunately, the numerous punctuation and capitalization errors knock that down to 2.5 stars. I won't be buying the third book, so I am rounding it down to two stars. And that makes me sad because the first book had such promise.… (mais)

This book is a bit of an oddball. It is obviously written for young adults, but its style could be off-putting. There are quite a few unresolved mysterious events. However, the situation is intriguing and still has me guessing.

I liked the brilliant children and felt sympathy for their more normal caretakers, especially their teacher. I liked how she tried to show them the pleasure of the ordinary things in life. With elements of steampunk, I decided to keep reading on, buying the next book in the series.

Before suggesting this book to a young adult, I'd suggest being familiar with their reading interests. While it was ultimately a good read, there are some who would find it too "precious" in its style. There are also some scenes that were tense and could be disturbing.… (mais)

The Atomic Weight of Secrets tells the story of five young children who are absolutely brilliant inventors. Torn away from their homes without warning, they are deposited far from home. Mysterious men in black are constantly monitoring them. All they know is that they have one another, and their parents are missing. Sounds like quite a secretive mystery doesn't it?

Let me begin at the beginning, with the characters. Lucy, Jasper, Wallace, Faye and Noah are a motley crew of kids at first. All from different backgrounds, it takes them a while to understand one another. Eden Unger Bowditch allows each of her characters to have such unique and wonderful personalities. From the quiet and shy one, to the fiery and slightly spiteful one, they are so much fun to follow. As a reader, I fell in love with them more and more as I learned about their pasts.

However it was the story that really held problems for me. So much time is spent giving background to the children, and allowing them to grow, that there isn't much actual story line at all. It's slow. The elements of mystery that are present are great. The men in black are a constant reminder of something much bigger than the children themselves. Still, to be honest, nothing really happens. This isn't a spoiler, it's just true. I know this is a first book in a series and so I suppose that more will be coming later. I just felt a little cheated by how incomplete this book really felt.

Part historical fiction, part mystery The Atomic Weight of Secrets really did have a lot of potential to be fabulous. The children drew me in, but the story killed it for me. There were even times where things were so slow that I almost decided to put the book down, and that hardly ever happens for me. What I hope is that the next book in the series has more action! As I said, the characters are wonderful. I look forward to seeing them use their talents even more, hopefully this time in an effort to do something daring.… (mais)

It's 1903, and five children suddenly find themselves and their parents whisked away from their homes all over the world, to Dayton, Ohio, by mysterious men dressed entirely in black. The children are then separated from their parents, and brought together as the only students of Miss Brett, at Sole Manner Farm.

The children's parents are brilliant scientists, and the children themselves--Faye, Jasper, Lucy, Noah, and Wallace--are also budding young brilliant scientists. Miss Brett is startled to discover that she has nothing to teach them in the realm of science and mathematics, and equally startled to discover that they have never encountered stories, rhymes, songs, any form of literature. (Or cooking, either; Faye, for instance, has never seen eggs in their uncooked form.) They abandon the intended lesson plan, and the children expand Miss Brett's knowledge of science, while she introduces them to literature and cooking.

Meanwhile, the children worry about the absence of their parents and the lack of any word from them, and about the fact that the Men in Black are patrolling around the farm, ensuring that they cannot escape. But these are not your ordinary scared children. They act out their fear by trying to investigate the Men in Black, and invent the means to escape from the farm, and find and rescue their parents. In the process, these children who have never had good school experiences because they knew even more than their teachers, who have never had encounters that didn't end badly because they are accustomed to always being the smartest, have to learn how to work together as a team. The mechanical genius, the chemistry genius, the photographic memory, the budding young draftsman who can make "sketches" that are good working blueprints, all need to learn mutual respect and trust, and pool those talents.

They also need to take in a good deal of conflicting and confusing evidence, and figure out who in the adult world are their friends, and who are their enemies.

In addition to some definite science-fictional elements, there's also a strong element of secret history here, and saying more than that would reveal some critical plot elements far too soon.

This is a good, solid, young adult science fiction novel, probably accessible to readers somewhat below the intended age range. It is the first of a series, but does come to a reasonably satisfying interim conclusion.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.… (mais)