Customer Reviews

The Changeling Garden

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

i really liked this book. the story idea was original, the writing was engaging, and the characters were likable. I would not call it a horror novel though, it was more like a supernatural mystery. I can see where they would have a hard time putting this into any catagory.

It did have a bit of an annoyingly heavy handed ecological message; we could have figured out the point without the extra material.

Even though there are no fairies in the books, it kind of reminded me of a modern fairytale.

As a first novel, I throughly enjoyed this imaginative book. Ms Elze opened a world of conjecture I had never contemplated and fleshed it out wonderfully. The main characters are well developed and should be used in future novels. They could grow along with Ms Elze's skills. I would love to read more of her work.

At first, I was hesitant to read this book. I thought the plot sounded stupid. Out of boredom I finally read it and I thought it was great! Some scenes could have been more developed and scarier and there was absolutely no suspence as to who the murderer was. I kept reading because it was very entertaining and I think it is one of those books where you can't think about too much and try to make sense of it. I loved the idea of a talking garden. I would reccomend this book to anyone who wants an entertaining, easy to read story.

If you like to get lost in a fantasy world, then you will love this book. I loved the concept of a magical garden. At first I was a little concerned about the large amount of dialog in the novel but that turned out to be one of its strengths. The story was obviously far fetched but that did not matter. I just let my inmagination run wild and became so involved in the story that I felt I was apart of the landscape. The writer allowed me to visualize the setting with vivid detail. Not realistic, but a lot of fun! Magical!

This book kept me guessing and the concept was wonderful. Her ending was a but questionable, but all in all it was a wonderful book

This is one of the most physically beautiful books that I own. Everything about it is green - the pages are trimmed with it and even the text is green! The story was like a drawn out fairy tale with an overly hammered in message at the end- all in all making it Agatha Christie mated with _Ferngully_ - still it was an entertaining read. She does have a second book, but unless it is as physically beautiful as this one, I am not terribly interested.

I had bought this book in the hopes that I would be getting a real hair-raiser! Alas, what I ended up getting was a dud. The story starts out promising enough, but then it goes off on a tangent-bringing the story to an unexpected direction that seems to have nothing to do with its beginning! There were other aspects to the story which had promise, but they were ultimitely abandoned with absolutely no explaination! Truly a dissapointment! The CHANGELING GARDEN was in bad need of fertilizer, for it simply did'nt bloom for this reader!

Dire first novel that makes you feel sorry for the author, but even more for her readers. Nothing in this story rings true. The plot is so silly it makes you wonder how in the world Ms. Elze managed to sell her text; it reads like it was written by a 12-year-old, and a pretty immature one at that, if the brother-sister-type of marriage she describes and the total lack of anything even remotely sexy is anything to go by. The reader knows where this pathetic little tale is headed the instant Annie tells her friend her "real" name (which is a joke in itself). Strangely enough, she never seems to notice that her young son is a prodigy, talking with the vocabulary and assurance of a 30-year-old at the tender age of 5. She is much too busy talking to her plants. You have to admire Ms Elze for her incredible talent of killing off each and every potentially scary scene, which is pretty hard to do when you're dealing with a woman who finds herself alone in her house with a murderer trying to get in, but Ms Elze pulls it off every time. The identity of the murderer is pretty obvious from the start too, so no suspense there either. Ms Elze supplies us also with a pair of battling Mayans/Toltecs, which reads like some kind of Disney fantasy gone wrong, and she throws in some space travel and eco-consciousness for the bargain. At the end, her protagonist single-handedly saves the rain forest (and, of course, the world) from destruction, in a way that would even make the basest made-for-tv-movie blush with embarrassment. You won't buy it when you read it. Don't buy it now.

I did actually read this whole book...mainly because the concept was new and different, it's just too bad that the story strayed so far from...well, from anything remotely believable, plausible, or entertaining. Or maybe it just sucked me in the same way the garden sucked Annie and David in...I'm not sure.

This book was so bizarre - I'm still not sure if it was a horror, or fantasy, or comedy, or what. The characters were completely unbelievable. For example, Annie had a complete willingness to accept whatever it was that was happening to her without much question, and David was the most mature five-year-old I've ever encountered. The ending was completely anticlimactic and the thinly veiled ecological statement the book tried to make was totally contrived.

If you want a book on ecology, there's plenty of good ones out there, not this. If you want a horror, stick to King or Barker. If you want a comedy, go with Evanovich or a stand-up. In short, unless you have a lot of time on your hands and money to burn, I wouldn't reccomend this one.