All that glitters is not gold (Kingdom of the Golden Dragon - Isabel Allende)

Member Name: rappinhood

Product:	Kingdom of the Golden Dragon - Isabel Allende
Date:	23/10/05 (573 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautfiul descriptions of scenery and locations

Disadvantages: Hard to believe in

This is only the second or third Isabel Allende book that I've read and it was not what I expected at all.

Style
As usual, the writing style is typically South American (if you have read any Garcia Marquez you will know what I mean) with flowery and ornate phrases and lyrical descriptions. The descriptions of the scenery of the Himalayas, where most of the story is set, were beautiful and made me want to visit that area.

Plot
The novel features three main characters, Alex Cold, his friend Nadia and his grandmother Kate. The bad guys are the Collector, who is ultra-rich and can buy almost anything he wants, and the Specialist, a sort of all-purpose hit man and procurer, hired by the Collector to get the Golden Dragon, a legendary statue which is supposed to foretell the future. The Collector hopes to become even richer by using this to make a killing on the stock market. Kate is also interested in the Golden Dragon, although not for the same reasons. She's a journalist and it would make a good story. The story centres around the Specialist's efforts to get hold of the Dragon and the efforts of Kate, Alex, Nadia and others to stop the theft and then to retrieve it. There are a couple of good twists, which I won't reveal as that might spoil the story.

What I thought
I was puzzled by the profusion of references to what these characters had done in a previous adventure in the Amazon, but it made more sense once I'd realized this was part two of a trilogy. If you read this book, you will find you know almost as much about the first adventure as the current one.

Although I liked the main characters, I found it really hard to believe in them, with both the children seeming far too wise for their ages (Alex is about 16 and Nadia 13) and prone to go tearing off to do impossible things. Their tendency to turn into their totems (Alex’s a jaguar and Nadia’s an eagle) is also bizarre. The main villains also seem to be caricatures, with just a few salient characteristics to enable us to pick them out.

That being said, I enjoyed the book despite the feeling of unreality that pervades it. I discovered after I'd finished reading the novel that it's meant to be a children's book (it was a reading group selection, hence my ignorance), and that probably accounts for the magical and unreal elements. At the age of 12, I would have thoroughly enjoyed it; as an adult, some elements are a bit too fantastical for my taste.

Summary: A good children's story; adults may find it harder to read