Kingdom of the Golden Dragon by Isabel Allende

March 13th, 2008 at 8:57am |

Audience: Middle School

Rating: B

Synopsis:

Alex Cold and Nadia join Kate on another one of her crazy adventures. She thinks she’s traveling to the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon to write a new article for International Geographic, but she ends up bringing her team into the middle of an international plot to steal the country’s biggest treasure and kidnap the king. Of course Alex and Nadia get themselves caught up in the middle of the conflict! This book, like The City of the Beasts, is full of real environmental and cultural information and keeps your interest with an adventurous plot.

Chatter:

(Spoiler Alerts! ) The use of the totemic animals in The City of the Beasts was unique, but in this book it seemed to happen all the time. I got a bit sick of the magic being so convenient. While this book contained so much more magic, the end result was much less ‘magical.’

The long drawn-out introduction to this book bothered me as well. It was 40 pages before our main characters were introduced, and did anyone else think that Alex seemed… well, rather un-Alex-like in the first chapter? It seemed ridiculous for Alex to be acting so stupid at customs. He is hardly the type of person to foolishly declare that he has diamonds and a poisonous blowgun.

Once I read past these parts, I liked the book more (although there was a disappointing lack of Leblanc!). I thought that Judit was a pretty obvious villain, but that didn’t really spoil the plot because there were so many other subplots and adventures going on and the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon was so vividly described I could almost believe that it was a real place.

I will read the third book, but more because I’m curious to see how Alex and Nadia will develop than for any interesting in reading more about their “eagle” and “jaguar” identities. Hopefully that book will be a little less magical and a little more about the characters.