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(3.50/5)A vibrant YA tale of the Amazon
La Ciudad de las Bestias follows two young teenagers, Alexander Cold and Nadia Santos, as they accompany a team delving into the Amazon rainforest in search of an enormous beast, and must work with both the international team assigned to the mission and the local natives in order to resolve the mystery peacefully.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book; Isabel Allende's prose is wonderful, and I could feel the wonder of the rainforest alongside Alex, even during sections where my comprehension was less than satisfactory. There's a fair share of Amazon and Amazon native vocabulary here, but thankfully most/all of it is repeated fairly often, so most shouldn't have too much trouble picking it up. Though most of the tale is grounded in reality, you do get a good dose of magical realism partway through, for those looking for/avoiding that genre.
Though this is book one in a trilogy, you could easily read this and not worry about the rest; it works just fine as a standalone. There are one or two ends that are looser than others, but it probably won't cause you to lose any sleep at night.
And while I didn't listen to it for the whole book, the chapters I did read along with the audiobook went very well; the audiobook narrator was very good from what I heard.
Young adult fiction from Isabelle Allende
This book is on a list of Time magazine’s top 100 young adult novels of all time, and by the wonderful Chilean author Isabelle Allende.
As a language learner this was a good read, more challenging than a children’s book, but easier to read than a standard novel. I thought it was a little harder than Harry Potter but not by much.
I enjoyed the mix of adventure and exploration in the Amazon. The story went in directions I didn’t expect and came to a satisfying conclusion. Works fine as a stand alone novel, but left me eager to carry on reading the rest of the trilogy.
In the blurb on the back of my edition it says that Allende defines a novel as: a perfect combination of “adventure, magic, humour and nature”. That’s a good description of this book.