Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't despair! It gets better!, July 26, 1999
By A Customer
If you can make it through the first half of this book, you'll love it. I read about five chapters when I first bought it, get bored, and threw it under the bed to age for a couple of years. When I finally did finish it, it became my second favorite book. Adventure, action, and emotional twists happen in this book, but you have to wade through a deceptively bland beginning to get to it. Read it twice and I promise you'll find stuff in it that fascinates you, even though you swear it wasn't there before. But, to the book itself - Voight has the most masterful control over her characters of any author I know. Gwen is practical, strong, sharp, and, as someone else says down here, "worth emulating." She does what we all dream of doing - become a hero: Jackaroo, who is something like our Robin Hood, only distinct in his own right. Only she finds out being a hero isn't as easy as she suspected. What I found interesting was the power of a legend, and how people could manipulate it to their purposes, but could never really control it. This book is a thinking book. The danger it presents is mainly not through action but through concepts. No matter what you're expecting, this book will probably deliever something different, unless you've read Voight before. But give it a chance - when I finally, did, I fell in love with it.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
cohesive, finely tuned, September 29, 1999
By A Customer
It was only when I reached university and re-read this book that I realized how subtly drawn and complete Voigt's characters were. Where a less observant reader quickly bored of Voigt's dwelling on descriptions of everyday phenomena, I finally noticed what interaction was revealed, and what depth each character portrayal went to. By the book's end I was thoroughly engaged in the characters' lives, perceptions, and feelings, and could only applaud the plot restraint Voigt demonstrated in pacing out and finally finishing this novel. It remains one of my favourites.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masks, stories, and freedom: a compelling blend, October 12, 1998
By A Customer
In every time, in every place where the people are oppressed by a ruling class, there is a hero of the poor, an outlaw who rides outside the law and is yet its greatest champion. In old England it was Robin Hood. In Spaniard-ruled California it was Zorro. And here, in this unnamed kingdom ruled by a distant King and greedy Lords, it is Jackaroo. Jackaroo is the masked outlaw who rights wrongs, who saves true love, who comes to help the people in their worst times of need. Jackaroo is the name in every story, the hero of every tale. And Jackaroo, as Gwyn, the skeptical Innkeeper's Daughter, finds out, is not what he seems to be. Nor is anybody, as Gwyn discovers. Not the imperious Lord who winters at the Inn, not the silent servant Burl, not Gwyn's missing uncle Win...and not Gwyn herself. Beneath Jackaroo's mask, she is able to do the things that a law-abiding Kingdom girl would never be allowed--but which Gwyn has always dreamt of: being the savior of her people, actively fighting the Lords' injustice as opposed to passively accepting it, finally free of stifling tradition for the first time in sixteen years. But there is a price paid for the wearing of the mask: the heavy responsibility that comes with being a hero, and the sacrifice of herself that Gwyn must make to become Jackaroo. Jackaroo and the Kingdom are new but familiar, the feudal society vividly depicted and the characters sharply drawn and believable. Gwyn is strong-willed and far too intelligent for her position, Burl is steadfast and fully as intelligent beneath his slow smile, and Jackaroo--no matter which face he appears in--is the hero of every folktale. Voight's writing is compelling, making "Jackaroo" a page-turner to be read...and re-read...and read yet again. It's that good.
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