Sunday, January 01, 2006

Sign of the Crescent by Debbie Federici

This book starts out with an introduction to Taryn. Taryn has just lost her grandmother, and is suffering heart break because of the lost. Mean while teenagers are getting snatched by some unknown source, and going out at night for teens is getting riskier. There are people from the world, Neworld, whose job is to protect the teens from earth, Oldworld. Erick is one of those people. One night, when Erick is out trying to stop the kidnappings, he comes across Taryn. Erick is dispatched far away from Taryn, and her rescue seems impossible. When the Zumarian warrior, working for the bad guy, comes to take Taryn he grabs her. Whenever a Zummarian warrior grabs a person of the Oldworld they immediatly freeze, but Tary doesn't freeze when grabbed, Taryn fights back. Erick, who witnesses this, knows there is something different with Taryn, and goes to meet her. Erick and Taryn build a relationship over time, but one night Taryn is taken, and Erick decides it is time to attack the bad guy. Taryn is confronted with the bad guy and learns that he is her father. Taryn is presented with a choice that will decide the future for everyone. Taryn is left with the choice to choose love or power, and whichever way she chooses she betrays someone.

This book is about choosing. Throughout the book the characters are met with choices. Taryn faces the choice between love and power, while Erick faces the choice between following the rules and following the heart. The choices the characters choose are pretty alike, but one does the right thing while the other does the thing that goes against what is considered right. I thought the book was interesting because it showed how heavily the choices weighed upon each character. It showed how the characters ended up at least trying to do the right thing, but how their choice always seemed to out weigh the other choice. The characters were interesting together because one character knew what was going on while the other was learning. The characters were also interesting because they were different. One of the characters was a warrior, in perfect health, while the other was more of a thinker, who had to fight hearing loss and was battling a disease. Their differences extended deeper than that since one of the characters was born into a good family while the other was born into an evil family.The story itself was pretty good. The author did a very good job in describing the scenes in detail, and the thought processes that the author wrote for the characters were also detailed, and because of that the reader could get more of an insight into who the characters were. This book was a good book that could hold the readers interest easily and had main characters that you could easily like and antagonists that you hated but pitied.

Rating (0 - 10 scale): 7
Reviewer Age: 14
Reviewer City, State and Country: Tucson, Arizona U.S.A.