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Crossing Over (2010)

by Anna Kendall(Favorite Author)

2.99 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0670012467 (ISBN13: 9780670012466)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Viking Juvenile

review 1: I do wish I could say that I enjoyed this book, but really I didn't. It started out promising with young Roger being beat by his uncle in order to con hard working patrons out of their money. Roger crosses over to the world of the dead and speaks to whomever the patron wishes to hear from. But of course everyone in the world of the dead is catatonic so trying to speak to any of them is useless. But his life changes when his uncle attempts to rope him into (I don't remember the term for this) ambush a ship and steal all that is on it. Of course everyone gets caught, but Roger uses his gift to find the men on the ship and ends up saving his neck and somehow gets a job at the palace at the queens laundry. It is when Roger meets Lady Cecilia and is so smitten that I am lost. C... moreecilia is vapid and she's a horrible character. I know he's a young boy, but please don't set your standards so high! Not that she is really of high standards. It kind of picks up when speaking of the Queens but then loses me when Roger decides he MUST save Cecilia. I did enjoy this world where queens rule. There are two competing Queens. The first being the mother who refused to give her daughter the throne. The second being the daughter. Each has their own colors, blue and green. The story, though, could have been a little better I will admit. The cover is beautiful, which like many is why I picked it up. And the blub on the inside jacket sounded decent. I just wish it had been.
review 2: This is a classic fantasy in some respects: vaguely medieval-type setting, magical elements, strong sense of a class divide. At the same time, none of these are exactly as expected: the 'land of the dead' is an original idea (as far as I can tell), and the society is matriarchal - the characters find it completely bizarre that in other societies men rule, as women clearly should be in charge as the givers of life. Roger's gift/curse/ability is a unique product of this unique world and is the main point of interest in this novel.Roger narrates his own story and his voice convinced me as that of a relatively young teenager, although I was slightly jarred out of the story by his many references to erections. I also found his love for one of the court ladies irritating, as she was clearly a silly individual, but this didn't strike me as necessarily unrealistic. Teens (of both sexes) do develop what they experience as strong lurve feelings for inappropriate people, after all.The land of the dead itself was not at all what I expected, and this was refreshing. Strange things occur in this land in the course of the novel, and I'm sure there is much more to be discovered about how it works in the rest of the trilogy. Roger himself doesn't really know much about it all, but he is beginning to be curious in this book, so perhaps he will find people who can explain it all to him in his travels.Overall, I enjoyed this novel. It resolved the main plot issues, whilst leaving enough mystery about Roger's gift and the bigger picture to resolve in the rest of the series. I'd recommend this to teen fans of paranormal fantasy who are looking for something different to vampires, werewolves, angels and fairies. less

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