Forest of the Pygmies by Isabel Allende

March 27th, 2008 at 8:46am |

Audience: Middle School

Rating: C

Synopsis:

Alex Cold and Nadia are adventuring in Africa in this book. This time they are fighting to save a tribe of Pygmies from their enslavement within a Bantu village. Like The City of the Beasts and Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, they go on a journey that is part physical world, part spiritual world, and partially a message to the reader about respecting nature and the beliefs of others.

Chatter:

(Spoiler Alerts! ) This was my least favorite of the three books and I had time finishing it because I liked the first two books in the series. Was it just me, or did the characters seem very flat in this book? Kate was not her confident, brash self. Instead, she was constantly described as nervous and scared of getting older; this is a far cry from the Kate in the first book that told Alex that fear was useless.

The new characters: Angie and Brother Fernando, never felt fully developed to me. They didn’t have the same flair as Leblanc and Tensing. This plot too, while informative and interesting, was not as good. The whole cover story about going to write an article about the elephant safari seemed drawn out and silly. Why couldn’t they have just gone to write an article about pygmies? (Then they could have brought Leblanc because he’s an expert and the book would have been so much better!)

Another thing that bothered me was Alex’s continued search for a cure for his mother. He must not have faith in the cures he obtained in both the Amazon and the Himalayas if he asked the Pygmies for some of their curative powder as well.

The ending seemed silly and babyish. I was really annoyed with how the titles of Alex’s books were the titles of Allende’s books. Also, why would our nature-loving Nadia be dressed up like a ‘Mafioso’s girlfriend’ for graduation? It’s not exactly in her character to want to dress like a tramp. It seemed like Allende was trying to tie up too many loose ends too quickly. She needed to establish that Alex was going to be a doctor, that he found Nadia attractive, and that they were going to live happily ever after. Instead it seemed like it was an ending that belonged on another novel.