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Jan 21, 2005

Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, Isabelle Allende

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I am so disappointed in this book! First, I should say this is the sequel to City of the Beasts, but I've never read that book and it really didn't matter to my understanding of this book. Isabel Allende is one of my favorite authors. She has written The house of the spirits and Daughter of fortune : a novel, just to name two. She is originally from Peru and Chile and writes in the common South American style using magical realism. To sum that up and oversimplify, that means things that normally don't/can't happen in our straight up white America do, and nobody bats an eye. Not fantasy, different. In this book, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, Allende over-explains every potential instance of magical realism and takes all the magic out of it. The story line is ok - I find explorations of other cultures and religions, especially non Judeo-Christian ones, to be fascinating. If this story was infused with the same spot on writing style that Allende normally shows, I'd be jumping up and down and shoving this book in the face of everyone I met. But, like many authors who normally write for adult audiences unfortunately do, Allende has dumbed this one down too far.

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