Customer Reviews

The Divide

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has it all:

It has a well-paced and intelligent story laced with wry humour that still manages to unobtrusively educate and tackle such important themes as globalisation without ever become preachy. Ms Kay expertly juggles, weaves, and final neatly knits together at least half a dozen different plot threads.

There is a rich cast of quirky and varied characters who avoid the stereotypes so often found in the average children's book. Every character, (even those with only bit parts), in this book feels real. The heroes and heroines have flaws and foibles and the villains all have at least one likeable or redeeming feature. (My personal favourite is Ironclaw; a loveable, fearsome and occasionally pompous brazzle - The Divide's equivalent of a griffin - who specialises in pure mathematics. Yes - The Divide manages to make even abstract maths both interesting and fun!)

Best of all though, is the setting. A wonderfully well thought out magical other world that engages the imagination, wraps you up in a sense of wonder and leaves you longing for more.

In the book's introduction, the publisher says he is trying to persuade Ms Kay to write a sequel. I sincerely hope he succeeds!

I have four goddaughters all of whom are the right age for this book. I am buying a copy for each of them.

Felix is a boy whose parents are a little overprotective of him. And who can blame them? Their son has a potentially fatal heart condition. One wrong move could be Felix's last. Considering the circumstances, his parents are doubly horrified when Felix disappears during a family vacation to Costa Rica.

While his parents fear that Felix might be kidnapped or lost in the jungle, the truth is far stranger. Their son is in another world - one he entered accidentally while crossing the continental divide. In this other world, magic is real and Felix is treated like a legend that sprang from a storybook. After all, the many odd creatures that inhabit this magical world have never seen a human before and find it hard to believe that one is walking among them. Felix spends the majority of THE DIVIDE exploring the magical world, making friends with its bizarre inhabitants, and trying to find a spell that will send him home.

Some of my favorite characters in the book are the brazzles, which are huge, bird-like creatures, much like griffins. The males of the species are obsessed with math. The females are not. This does not make for happy brazzle marriages. Felix also becomes close friends with what is known as a tangle child. Her name is Betony and she is an elf. After getting over the fact that they have really met a legendary human, Felix's new friends are willing to use their understanding of magic to try and help him find his way home.

Unfortunately, not everyone in the magical world is so generous and kind. Felix also runs afoul of some unpleasant creatures, including japegrins, who want to take advantage of his helplessness.

THE DIVIDE is an imaginative book that I highly recommend to lovers of young adult fantasy. It has likeable characters, as well as villains who are easy to despise. It presents a magical world that the reader can see through Felix's eyes. Also, as an added bonus, it has a wonderful cover. Maybe that should not carry much weight, but for some reason, I was delighted by the cover that split down the middle. Overall, I believe that if readers jump to a magical world along with Felix, they will agree that it was well worth the trip.

Reviewed by: K. Osborn Sullivan

This was an excellent book!! It drifts you into a new world of excitement and fantasy. After I started reading it, it was hard to put down. I would hid it under my desk in class and read the pages hungrily every time I rode the subway. Not only are there mystery, suspense and adventure there is also magic, and tons of it. A wonderful land is tightly packed in the flaps of the book, one I was very sorry to leave when the book ended. The only disappointing thing about this book is that there is no sequel. But fear not! It is a very new book and hopefully there will be a sequel in the next couple of years, where I can flow back into my mystical universe.

Felix, a boy with a strange heart problem strays off of the path while he is on a vacation with his parents in Costa Rico. He takes a wrong turn and ends up at the legendary divide. He assembles himself half on either side and is wisked of in to a magical world where mystical creatures are real and humans are imaginary. While he is there he meets many creatures, including Betony the herbologist. With the help of his new friends can he find a way to cure his disease and find a way to get home?

The divide is the best book i ever read. The divide keeps you always wanting to read more. The divide is about a boy named felix, that has a heart disease that threatens his life. Felix falls in to a mythtical world where humans are a legend,and mythitcal beings become real. You should read this awsome book.

This is a great read. It's an exciting story set in an alternative world mixing myth, magic, science, even interesting stuff to do with math! But it all makes sense. The way the hero, Felix, gets from one world to another is ingenious. I think the age group (9-12 years) is wrong - my cousin enjoyed it and he's 14 and I wouldn't have understood it all a couple of years ago. The hero, Felix isn't the only great character. Some of the mythical beasts are terrific. My favorites are the sinistroms and the brazzle (phoenix in our world).

Felix knows he is going to die. He has a serious heart problem, and is just waiting for it to kill him. To help him enjoy his last days, his parents take him on a trip to Costa Rica, where Felix sees the famous continental divide. While on the divide, Felix passes out and enters a new dimension. There, myth is reality and reality is myth. Elves and griffens (called tangle folk and brazzles) roam the world alongside brittlehorns and japegrins (unicorns and pixies). Felix is a mythological human, and his arrival causes quite a stir. Unfortunatly, evil forces are at work and a japegrin called Snakeweed has many plans for Felix. The plot is original and very well written and I think kids 4-8 grade would enjoy it.
Before I go, I have to comment on the unique design of the book. The hardback book is opened through a slit in the middle instead of on the side and this causes some problems. Pages are often bent and torn when closing the book, so I would recomend buying it in paperback.
This is a great book and I'm recommending it to all my friends.

I have read the book, The Divide, and LOVED it! I have read many books, including the Artemis Fowl Series, Golden Compass, Sublte Knife, Amber Spyglass, and so on... But I must say that when you read this book you feel like you must do something more. Betony and Felix will have you waiting till you get another spare moment to read this wonderful page-turner. Amazing surprises fill this book. Everything ties together so well you wont need to go back and reread anything. I strongly recomend this book!!!

Thrown into another dimension, worlds away from his parents and his medication, Felix is suffering from a heart disease that, with or without his medication, he can die from. His newfound friends, MYTHICAL CREATURES, are helping him find a cure and a way to get back home using magic where science has failed. But will it be them helping Felix or Felix helping them?

The Divide is a thrilling fantasy novel written by Elizabeth Kay that, at the end, will leave you wishing for the next book, Back to the Divide. I've read hundreds of books and The Divide is up in my top two favorites along with Eragon. And who ever said you can't judge a book by its cover was wrong, because the cover is just as cool as the story inside. So stand on the Divide, say the magic words, and get ready for a journey beyond your wildest dream!

I loved this book, it was the most interesting book I've ever read. Usually I don't like reading, but I could never wait to read it again. It's so exciting and there are a lot of shocks that just make you want to read more and more, to see what happens.
Felix has a heart problem, so when he ran to the divide he passed out in the middle of it. And he somehow got transported to another world, which has magic and magical beings. He soon gets a friend and she tries to help him find a cure for his rare heart problem.
I think anyone with a good imagination and who is in the seventh grade or up will love this book, because there are some tough vocabulary words.