Customer Reviews

First Escape (Dopple Ganger Chronicles)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm always on the lookout for really good new books, and when I saw G.P. Taylor's newest book: THE FIRST ESCAPE, I thought it looked like it'd be pretty good. I had seen the cover art for some time and definitely wanted to read through it. When I finally did get my hands on the book, my emotions were mixed.

I knew that this book was a "new" format called the Illustra-Novel, and being a fan of comics / manga, I thought it sounded pretty good. While the cover art for the book looks great, I will say that when I saw the graphic novel sections, I was disappointed. First off, I'm a fan of old-school animation (not super old, mainly I'm thinking eighties, early nineties -- when animation was smoother). The drawings in the comic blocks are very squared off and modern-looking. Something I almost detest in modern cartoons. So initially it was a bit of a jump to get into it and get past the drawing style.

One thing I must point out is that this novel format is not revolutionary. All the buzz around the book is about how it's a mix of traditional novel and comics and illustrations. There have been other books before this one that have pulled off the same feat: THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABARET being one -- combining text and full page illustrations, where each page is a comic block in itself. And there are also the SPROUSE BROS. 47 R.O.N.I.N. books that contain sections in traditional comic-book format. I thought both of those pulled off the idea a little better than THE FIRST ESCAPE did. I will say however, that there are some very interesting graphics every now and again -- that I wish there had been more of -- where a real photo was used and then almost brushed to give it a very eerie, gothic look. Those were amazing, and had me wishing for more of the same rather than the block-look drawings.

Setting all of the comic and graphic elements aside, the one thing that Taylor really has going for him is the story here. He does a good job of presenting interesting twists into the story that definitely kept me interested. About thirty pages in (and they move very swiftly), he had me pretty much hooked. This, book one in the DOPPLEGANGER CHRONICLES, centers around three orphans, Saskia & Sadie (twins) and Erik. Together and separately, they come across a few very interesting mysteries when Saskia is taken away by an eccentric old lady to a huge mansion. Secrets and betrayals abound, and soon all three children find themselves in the biggest mess of their lives. Taylor throws in a few intriguing details here and there that definitely lead the reader to believe that there will be a bigger, more over-arcing storyline to come in later books.

The plotting is very tight, and while the climatic ending kind of circles around for a bit, it all goes down very smoothly and swiftlty. I definitely would say that the tween set is going to go for this Illustra-Novel, having grown up on the newer generation of cartoons. I only wish the drawing could have been in a different style -- if it had, I think I would have bumped this up to 5-stars for sure. Crossing my fingers that the next installment will be even better.

An amazing new book is out for tweens and teens. "The Dopple Ganger Chronicles: The First Escape" is a harrowing tale of two girls that live in an orphanage. They are twins who like to cause a bit of trouble here and there but when a woman comes in who wants to adopt only one girl there is uproar and we get to see the tale unfold of Saskia and Sadie Dopple and their friend, Erik Morrissey Ganger, a former thief. Saskia gets adopted by a rich, but slightly strange woman. While we watch as Sadie and Erik escape the orphanage to find Saskia we also watch a tale unfold at the mysterious mansion that Saskia has been whisked off to. As Saskia stumbles on a plot that puts her life at risk and Erik and Sadie have a gang of enemies chasing them, the three all have to make decisions on who to trust and what to believe. The book is written well and has an interesting feature: it contains comic book illustrations of some of the action and adventure! This book will be interesting to both girls and boys because of that feature I think. I had my 10 year old daughter read it and she absolutely loved it. The comic book illustrations amused her and she called the book, "awesome and very exciting" and declared the illustrations to be "very cool." I enjoyed it as well, so I think that it is a great book for all ages even though it is aimed at youth.

You know before the end of the first page that "The First Escape" will be a dark story, and it is. The illustrations are spiky and dark, the humor is dark, the protagonists are dark, and the villains even darker. No innocent victims, the Dopple twins instigate mayhem at every opportunity at the School for Wayward Children where they live.

"The First Escape" of G. P. Taylor's "Doppleganger Chronicles" had been on my read list for a long while because of the intriguing name and the publicity comparing it to the J.K. Rowling and Phillip Pullman series of novels. In fact, this tale reminds me more of Lemony Snicket's "Series of Unfortunate Events," but with Taylor's twins Saskia and Sadie Dopple plus friend Erik Ganger substituting for Snicket's Baudelaire orphans. In this adventure story the three teens plunge from crisis to catastrophe and back again beginning even before Saskia is taken for adoption and Sadie runs away from the school to find her. Every few pages reveal a new misadventure or narrow escape, and there's the rub.

The award-winning author spends so many pages on the calamities that there is little left for character development, and the incidents in Taylor's illustronovella often go far beyond the bounds of simply bad taste--literally. He gives a sketch of the facts as to why the children are at the school, but few personality traits displayed are of the heart-warming variety. We never really get to know the characters, and I still wonder why Erik joined the twins he initially seemed to dislike.

I thought the plot was interesting, the end was satisfactory, and some of the tricks with the type fonts were intriguing. Ultimately, however, I found it distracting to move back and forth between graphic and traditional illustrated novel formats, especially in a book whose chapters alternated between what was happening to each twin as the two came closer together. I do not recommend "The First Escape" as a book for younger children because of the disturbing nature of some of the characters and events. Older children and young adults who enjoy fast-paced reading, dark events and unruly teens may enjoy it.

Saskia and Sadie Dopple are a pair of trouble-making, rebellious 14-year-old identical twins, abandoned teenagers in the care of Isambard Dunstan's School for Wayward Children. When Saskia is adopted by the wealthy and eccentric Muzz Elliot, Sadie finds herself on the run from the law as she searches for her sister, accompanied by Erik Morrissey - a teenaged caretaker at Isambard Dunstan's.

The First Escape represents the first in a new series of illustra-novels from the pen of bestselling author G.P. Taylor. Illustra-novels straddle the divide between a traditional novel and a graphic novel, alternating pages of traditional text - text intertwined with graphics and standard comic pages. A team of artists and a talented adapter have tackled Taylor's written work, the finished result an impeccable fusion of design, art, and story.

The main strength of the illustra-novel is creating a strong visual theme, and The First Escape oozes stylistic cohesion. The dark cover, orange spine, and carefully black edged interior pages lend an eerie impression to the title on first glance. While the maxim "Don't judge a book by its cover" is oft touted, the opposite can be applied to this work.

While we find the story contents in line with the overall design features there is a striking difference between the cover art and the comic panels scattered throughout the novel. The cover illustration by Paul Green featuring a fluid depiction of Erik and Sadie differs immensely from the angular, blocky style found in the comic panels drawn by Daniel Boulton. Trench coats, voluminous trousers, black boots and the dim, nearly monochromatic palette contribute to a film noir flavour.

Not being partial to the geometrically inspired comics, I found the work on the mixed media pages more inspiring. Regular text intermixed with black and white illustrations, white text on black background, and large, hand-drawn words - pulled from the text and amplified -- kept me reading to see which techniques would be incorporated on the following pages. The innovative design paired with a story replete with danger and mystery will keep readers moving along at a good clip. Reluctant readers will also find the alternation of text with comic panels an incentive to plow through the text in their efforts to reach the next set of illustrations.

The First Escape is published by Salt River, an imprint of Tyndale - the prominent Christian publishing house. While printed under a faith based imprint, and sold on the Christian retail circuit, any references to faith are glancing and inconclusive, though it is difficult to determine which path the story will take in future volumes.

In my opinion Taylor takes cultural relevance too far. Murder schemes, mad magicians, séances and a cast of creepy characters contribute to the eerie, otherworldly story that has more in common with Lemony Snicket than it does most Christian fiction for teenagers. Due to the edgy and questionable content matter some parents may decide to pass on this title for their children. However, with the marked popularity of A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Dopple Ganger Chronicles will likely find a wide readership. Based upon this first installment, our family will not be among them.

I hate manga. There's just something about those freaky little characters with the spiky green hair that gets on my nerves. So when I heard that G. P. Taylor, the most popular Christian YA author of the decade, was going to write a new-fangled "illustra-novel", I didn't want to have anything to do with it. That is, until I read the first chapter on Amazon.

In previous books, G. P. Taylor loved getting stuck on long and boring descriptions at the absolute worst times. The "illsutra" part of this book solves that problem perfectly. He doesn't have to describe a scene when the reader can see it already. And as a result, this book moves at such a break-neck pace I had to read the complicated ending twice to completely wrap my mind around it.

Oh, and one more thing. There's not a single lock of spiky green hair to be found here.

The First Escape is the first of Taylor's Dopple Ganger Chronicles. The book stars three young orphans: two girls, namely the Sadie and Saskia Dopple, as well as their male accomplice Erik Ganger. The trio starts out at Isambard Dunstan's School for Wayward Children, but early on in the story, Saskia is adopted by an eccentric old woman, Muzz Eliot, who decides that her sister Sadie doesn't have teeth that merit adoption, so the twins are parted. Erik and Sadie battle Isambard Dunstan's staff, the police, and a mad magician complete with an arsenal of exploding chickens in their quest to find Saskia. Meanwhile, Saskia stumbles upon a mystery that may result in her own murder.

Overall, The First Escape reads like a great piece of Victorian fiction; think Charles Dickens or Emily Bronte. There are elements of the supernatural strewn throughout the story, as well as action/adventure and mystery. While it took a while for me to get invested in the story, by about the middle of the book, I couldn't put it down. One of the characters is an angel, and there are some broad hints at God as well. I can see future story lines developing this part of the series quite well.

Story aside though, what is amazing about this book is its use of the illustronovella genre. Part novel and part graphic novel, The First Escape, nearly seamlessly combines comic-book graphics, poster art, and full text to create an original reading experience unlike anything I have encountered before. The comic sections aren't amazing; they are reminiscent of Nickelodeon's cheap, blocky animation, but combined with the poster art and the full text, they really add something spectacular to the story.

All in all I would definitely recommend the book for a good story and an engaging use of art in the telling of it.

A review copy was provided by the publisher. All opinions are my own. This review was originally published on my blog: Entering the Manifest Presence of the Divine.

This book is a completely different format than any I've read before. It's part graphic novel and part fiction novel. The format was what first captured my attention when I purchased this book as a gift for Wally. (He is the King of Graphic Novels around here.) After he read it, I got to see what it was all about. The story of the identical twins had me interested right away, I like twins...it's that whole sharing a womb, sharing a lifeline, creepiness that draws me in. With that said, the sisters did tend to blend together too often.

With one sister being adopted and the other left behind, the story quickly picks up pace and moves into an adventure. Sadie and Erik escape and run for their lives in order to find Saskia, whom is fighting for her life. Some of the most amusing characters that you meet are too short lived. There is a great scene with the dogs that tops all of the others, but the dogs are not central characters within the story.

Some of the artwork repeats the novel portion that was placed right before it, and repeating the storyline threw me off. Bits of the art are difficult to make out as well, it may be a matter of perspective, but there were parts of the drawings that I just couldn't figure out. The story comes up a bit short as it doesn't tie everything up neatly at the end, but it was written as part of a 6 book series. Conveniently, there is a mystery left unsolved, which leads into book two, The Secret of Indigo Moon.

Sure to be a kid pleaser . . . this book combines graphics and a plot driven story to create a highly atmospheric adventure--lots of graphic novel features intermixed with black pages and large fonts and regular text. Plot twists and turns. Characters are not what they seem (and sometimes it is hard to distinguish between the twins (maybe intentional) and between some of the other eviler characters. Very melodramatic. A book that should be very popular. Good for reluctant readers.

I initially obtained this book on a trial basis, and was excited about the premise of a novel which would capture the attention of tweens who are less than motivated about reading. Unfortunately, once I started reading the book I was much less excited, and actually had to force myself to finish it. The story was such that the reader felt little sympathy for the trouble-making twins, Sadie and Saskia. But even more than that, some of the situations they find themselves in, such as being electrocuted, tied up, and part of a seance, are things that I would rather my children not spend their time reading. There are much more wholesome stories out there. I evenutally shared the book with our youth pastor, who agreed that the premise of the book was good, but that the story was just plain bad. Thank you, but no thank you.

Clever, clever, clever... that pretty much describes this book. It is part novel, part comic, part graphic novel and totally clever! I read through it in a day and passed it to my 12 year old daughter, Sarah, to have her check it out. She has gotten halfway through it in one day and when I just asked her about it she said, "I'm not finished with it, but it's cool and fun to read." I think that's all I'll get out of her until she's done with it. Personally I think the concept is wonderful, even as an adult I enjoyed it. The story didn't totally engage me, but I will probably get the next ones in the series to see where the chronicles of DoppleGanger will take us. I give this book 4 stars based on sheer cleverness alone!