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Mar 12, 2009

Chandra rated it:

This was a very disappointing foray into children's literature for one of my very favorite authors. I really cringe to think that this might be some people's only exposure to Allende. This story about 2 children's amazon journey starts out strong and then goes completely wheels off when they encounter a hidden tribe of magical Indians. There is no way I will even think of reading the sequels. Absolutely not recommended!

5 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jun 10, 2008

Cait rated it:

I wanted to try some of Allende's work, and being lazy I picked one of her kids' books. However, I'm not sure that was the best choice after all. 'City of the Beasts' was not quite my cup of tea, even though I generally enjoy YA-books. However, I tend to enjoy them because they are lighthearted and easy to read, or because they present difficult problems in a slightly less depressing light. City on the Beasts did not have that lightness. It wanted to incorporate some issues (genocide, exploitati More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 03, 2007

Elizabeth rated it:

I wrote the below review while reading City of the Beasts; however, I later discovered that the book is actually the first of a trilogy written by Isabelle Allende for teenage readers! Oops! Although I wouldn't recommend the book to an adult, I imagine a teenager might enjoy it.

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I had some exposure to Isabelle Allende in high school Spanish class and had relatively high expectations for her writing ability considering that she is a well-renowned, best selling author. More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 04, 2010

Carmen rated it:

My friend read Isabel Allende books and she lend me this one. At first, after a few pages, I was sceptical and didn't expect much. I decided to keep on reading in any case (I cannot put a book down, even if it is bad) and I soon relized that I may have been predjudiced.

The story line was quite nice but the fact that the boy played flute certainly made an impact. I had some trouble with my commitment towards my flute playing because I didn't practice and whatever. Although him pul More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 25, 2008

Natalie rated it:

Gah! I was really disappointed with this little series from Allende. I love her books so much, but she did NOT successfully make the transition to writing for younger readers. The plots of all three in the series were very interesting and could have been a lot of fun, but the writing was often awkward and forced, especially the magical bits. The characters were a little two-dimensional, and even the dialogue was strained. She had some nifty ideas, but it seemed like she was trying to dumb them d More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2011

Sonia added it

Last week I finished my book the day after I had ordered a large delivery from Amazon, so I thought I’d make the most of working in Camden by popping along to the many charity shops, to pick up a ‘filler’ book to tide me over til my delivery arrived.

I am SO glad that I did, as City Of The Beasts is not a book I reckon I would ever have picked out online (although the cover is very pretty!).

£1.99 in the YMCA shop introduced me to Alexander Cold, a 15 year old American lad More...

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Apr 20, 2010

Joyce rated it:

Normally I don t read Young Adult fiction because usually the level of sophistication justifiably so is lower than I like to read. Not that I m always happy with adult fiction in that regard, for that matter! However, I do recognize the differences in target audiences. [return][return]But I couldn t resist this one. Isabel Allende is one of my favorite authors; I have almost all of her books in translation and one in Spanish. Her work is superb. And this story is set in the Amazon b More...

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Feb 06, 2012

ConvincoDude rated it:

When I was about, let's see, ten or eleven years old, I got the sequel, "Kingdom of the Golden Dragon," for Christmas. For some inexplicable reason, my dad really enjoyed it, but I hated it, probably because it was part two of the series and I'd never read part one. So for my sophomore year of high school, when my English teacher told us to read a total of four books written by foreign-born authors (that is, born outside of the US or England), I'd run out of ideas by the time I had to More...

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Apr 04, 2011

viktoria rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 12, 2011

Lis rated it:

Alexander Cold, a fifteen-year-old California boy, is sent to stay with his grandmother in New York while his mother is being treated for cancer. After arriving at the airport to find no one waiting for him, he wanders through an alternate-dimension New York where no one will give directions to a polite out-of-towner, has all his belongings except his passport stolen by a girl around whom, had the plot not demanded it, he'd never have dropped his guard for a second, and eventually winds up at th More...

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Dec 09, 2010

Paz rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jan 27, 2011

Erin rated it:

This book deserves four stars for the wonderful magical realism that Allende crafts and two for the terrible plot. The premise of a group of native people that need to be saved by outsiders is tired. To add insult to injury, the outsiders responsible for the salvation of the natives are teenagers. My mind wandered to create a Dances with Wolves in the Amazon scenario while reading.

I was also struck by the amount of explaining and preaching contained within the story. Allende do More...

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Oct 06, 2010

Max rated it:

When I first found out that my freshman students were reading "City of Beasts" in another class, I was blown away. I've read Allende, and while her prose is beautiful, it is dense. But my students were raving about! They loved it!
So I asked one of my students to borrow it.
The first thing I noticed was the larger margins, the larger print, the larger spaces between the words.
"Huh," I said, figuring that it was just type set.
And then, as I began read More...

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Mar 06, 2011

Lucy rated it:

I like Isabel Allende: I think she's fiesty, funny and a very eloquent when I heard that she hadn't written a book about sustainability issues, I was very excited. However, I admit that I read this book because it was recommended to me by a friend who described it as 'unputdownable'.

I disagree.

The language was far simpler than you would expect from an Allende novel but as the book is aimed at teenager readers this is not unexpected. You would expect the story, however, to be More...

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Jun 17, 2009

Kristin rated it:

City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende is a fascinating fantasy (couldn’t resist) with plenty of adventure and action. This book is about Alex Cold, who must leave the rest of his family (including his sick mother) to stay with his grandmother, Kate. Kate is about to embark on an expedition to the Amazon to write an article on the legendary Beast. This trip develops into more of a journey for Alex and his new friend Nadia. As jaguar and eagle, the two must save the People of the Mist as well as di More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 15, 2011

Anastasia rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Sep 27, 2011

Valeria rated it:

This is one of my best-FAVORITE-I-love-the-most books. Isabell Allendes blends magnifically the mistery about the feared 'beast' in the Amazonic jungle, where nothing is what you expect.
Alex is a 15 yoar old; he lives in CA in a happy family life... as happy it could be with your mom dying for cancer, your doctor-dad fightin for save her, your crazy little sisters actin weirder than usuall; isn't that happy?
The thing becomes interesting then.
I loved 'grany' Kate because she do More...

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Jan 12, 2011

Rauli rated it:

Para todos aquellos que critican este libro por ser tan differente a todos los otros libros de Isabel Allende: No sean tontos claro que lo es es un libro para Niños y Jovenes ! que niño quiere leer algo sobre la vida desolada de alguien o de la cabeza de una madre que se encuentra en un closet del sotano o de la horrible que es perder a tu hija?? Enverdad tienen que tomar encuesta a la audiencia a la cual el libro esta dirigida. La aventura de un niño cualquiera como Alex en la Selva Amazonica d More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 28, 2009

Susie rated it:

This is a great book. Two teenagers have a great adventure in the Amazon. They discover their totem, and their special powers.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 29, 2011

Emily rated it:

I really didn't get into this one. It's translated from Spanish, and I don't know if that's why some of it seems really stilted or what, but I tried to cut the book some slack for it anyway. Allende has this weird habit of telling you what's going to happen with certain minor things, like, if the character learns a new thing, the narration will tell you how by the end of the next week he'll have reason to use that thing a lot more, or whatever. It's not even foreshadowing because it doesn't come More...

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Jul 20, 2010

Shorouk rated it:

روايه لا بأس بها و مسلية .. تشبه الى حد ما قصص المغامرات التى يكون ابطالها اطفال ومراهقون لا يلتفت لهم الكبار بينما هم المحركون الحقيقيون للاحداث صديقتى التى اعارتنى الروايه قالت انها تشبه انديانا جونز انا لم اشاهد سلسلة الافلام لاحكم لكن يمكنها ان تتحول لفيلم مشوق من افلام ديزني العاديه او الرسوم المتحركة
هناك اشاره في اخر الروايه عن انتقال كاتى كولد جده الكسندر للهملايا في مغامرة جديده في مكان يدعى مملكة التنين الذهبي لو ان هناك روايه اخري لالندي بذات الاسم فانا متشوقه لقرائتها .. اريد ا More...

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Jan 02, 2011

Meg rated it:

If this is the first book of Isabel Allende that you have picked up....PUT IT DOWN. This book is NOT her typical writing....it is boring, plain...and non-poetic. I was delighted to see that she was writing for YA---and hoped to pass this book on to a student, but now that I have SLOWLY suffered through the book (hoping at any moment her writing would appear)....I say run. AWAY. I don't think we can blame the translator on this book....we can just say that she was trying too hard to fit into the More...

1 comment like

Sep 07, 2010

Max rated it:

This book is an amazing book that includes gods Indians in the Amazon and a group of people looking for a beast. The main character is named Alex, he is a boy from America who is on the trip with his grand mother. Alex's mom is a cancer patient who has to go to Texas for a procedure for the cancer. Alex meets a girl named Nadia while on the expedition and they become best friends. While out looking for the beast Alex and Nadia hear a plan to kill all of the Indians so that they can mine ther More...

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Jan 12, 2011

Sheralyn rated it:

It is hard to say whether or not this book is clean, so I will shelve it as clean but then hope that any looking for a good book read my comments. No foul language, no sexual undertones, at least not purposefully, but seeing how the book takes place in the amazon and many of the unseen tribes reside in the nude, much is hard to judge. The grandmother is a hoot, his story about learning to swim at the age of four when his grandmother threw him into the deep end and left him there to fight his way More...

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Jan 05, 2012

Robin rated it:

This book was such a disappointment from a usually fantastic author. The story follows Alex and his friend Nadia as they go on an Amazon expedition and find themselves destined to save the forest and its tribe of *Magical Indians* from mining and genocide. Though the book deals with some incredibly complex social and environmental issues, Allende dumbs the whole story down in a failed attempt to fit into the YA genre. All of the characters are caricatures, usually with just one defining characte More...

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Jul 12, 2011

Julia rated it:

Isabel Allende is a fantastic author, but this book (which is different from her others in that it's targeted for a young adult readership) is not her best work. I enjoyed learning about the natural world of the Amazon, and I thought that the concept of ancient beasts living hidden there to be really intriguing in a mytho-magical way. But I thought her characters were flat, and that was a big disappointment, because her characters in her other novels are always really interesting. She's great More...

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Aug 07, 2011

Neill rated it:

Fifteen year old Alex’s mother is sick and so his dad sends him to go on an expedition to the heart of the Amazon with his hard-hearted grandmother, a writer for International Geographic magazine. She is searching for the Beasts, Sasquatch like creatures that have been killing people. Alex is befriended by Nadia, the thirteen year old daughter of one of the members of the expedition who is well experienced in the ways of the Amazon. Alex and Nadia are captured by the People of the Mist becaus More...

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Oct 29, 2010

Alexandert added it

What I thought about the City of Beast was that was a intresting read because after the main character leaves his home in California he embarks on an amazing journey to a forbidden country. The main character Alexander Cold leaves California because his mother is very sick and his father sends his son to his grand mother's house in New York. So after Alex leaves his house in California he goes to the airport and gets ready to take the plane for the first time in his life. Alex was very excited,s More...

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Jan 24, 2012

Rhea rated it:

Menurutku ada lubang dalam cerita ini.

Alex seorang remaja biasa saja yang marah karena keadaan keluarganya yang berubah sejak ibunya menderita kanker.

Tiba-tiba ketika berpetualang dengan neneknya ke Amazon, dia bisa melihat kilasan ibunya yang sedang sakit di New York dan dia mengirimkan energi positif ke ibunya. Bagaimana bisa? Entahlah. Kenapa remaja seumuran dia tidak berpikir untuk berdoa saja alih-alih mengirimkan energi positif? Entahlah. Dan bagaimana dia yakin ba More...

2 comments like

Mar 19, 2009

Janet rated it:

Someone (meaning the whole world) told me that Isabel Allende is a great writer, but i beg to differ. Maybe it was a really poor translation, but htis book drove me nuts. I liked the story and it kept me interested, but the dialogue was not natural or realistic. Also, there were a few disconcerting similarities to Harry Potter. Professor Leblanc, for example, is the same exact character as the professor that Ron´s mother was in love with that ALSO had a name that started with L. Gilderoy Loc More...

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