Customer Reviews

Land of Loss (Everworld)

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really liked this book, and the others in the series. I agree with some reviews that there is a little more cussing than is needed, but I am 12, and I dont mind a bit. Animorphs are great, but the storyline is kinda old, and I read them a lot, so I wanted an older book to read. One that wasnt so easy. Animorphs I can predict what is going to happen, because for cryin out loud there are about 35 of them! In Everworld there are twists and turns that kept me reading! And I totally dissagree that the charaters dont have personality. They are belivable personalitys of teens, these books tell the truth. I give KA snaps for showing the real thoughts of teens, not a Brady Bunch senario. Bad stuff happens to them plenty, I mean almost getting your heart carved out isnt bad enough for ya? If you like exiting, thrilling, mysterious books with a little bit of magic and a teens perspective you should deffanatly read this!! Again I LOVED this book, its great!

Land of Loss picks up right where the first book left off. David, Christopher, Jalil and April have travelled to an Aztec City with a group of Vikings who are preparing to go to war. Their target: the Aztec God, Huitzilopoctli, whose head is the bargaining tool needed for the return of the Norsemen's own God, Odin. Armed with the legendary hammer of Thor, the Vikings were confident of victory. But when the plan didn't go as expected, Christopher and the others found themselves caught in the centre of a battle to the death...

Land of Loss is the second book in KA Applegate's Everworld series and if anything, it's even better then the first. I found Christopher a more likeable narrator than David and his commentary adds plenty of humour to the book. The descriptions of Everworld are so vivid you can actually imagine being there, and the books manage to entertain as well as educate with a mix of history, mythology, fantasy, action and suspense. I find myself liking the characters more and the author really manages to get inside the heads of teenagers. Yes, there's swearing, but it only adds to the realism. I love the Animorphs series, but these books are just so much better, less predictable and more complex. I recommend this to all fans of the Everworld series.

Interesting. Very interesting. These books are not what I'm used too, in terms of the foul language and violence and stuff, but I have no trouble handling it. Though I think that they would be as welcome, if not more welcome in the horror section than in the fantasy section. For parents, I would not recomend these books to anyone under fourteen or so, because of the almost constant swearing and intense violence. So, anyway, this time Christopher tells the tell as he, David, Jalil, and April all struggle to understand the paradox of Everworld. It picks up almost exactly where the previous book left off, right in the middle of a battle, and the intire book pretty much consists of them trying to escape imprisnment with the Aztecs before they are sacrificed to the Aztec god. I thought it built nicely upon the first, deepening the adventure, and also giving an excellent choice of which character to pick up the story next. I had not been fond of Christopher at all before this, since he is exactly the sort of person I hate in real life, yet this book shows that even he has feelings and thoughts of his own that go beyond girls and food. It would be very interesting to also hear from April and Jalil, since so far they seem to be the most intersting, and I hope the series continues this book by book character switching. (I am on book three so I already know that they do. The next book is from the point of view of April) So, an interesting series, and one I would like to read the rest of.

I gave this book 5 stars cuz it contained lots of action and adventure. Even though it was fiction, it had some real events in the story, too. For instance, the wars the Vikings had against the Romans and the god Hitzapoctli which is the good of blood. He came from history. It gave all the information I needed for my book jacket project I am doing about books that are fiction but have some real events in it, too. Even my classmate Casey Brannigan and his friend Florian Hinterburger and a few other people bought it the first day it came out in our school book fair. They also thought it was a great book. I recommend u buy this book.

Wow, if you are reading this reveiw you have to read this book. Right when I started this book I was automatically drawn to it. I would stay up for hours not able to put this book down. It starts out as Chris, Jalil, April, and David are for some reason pulled to a boat launch where Senna (Davids girl friend) was sitting on a rock at 5 o'clock in the morning. For some unknown reason they all got pulled into a dream world "Ever World", but Senna didn't get pulled to the same location on Ever World as every one else, and from there on then they are struggling to surive and find Senna in this unknown place. They first were born on earth with cars and human beings, but now they are surounded with furious vikings to giant snakes and wolves.

HINT: If you plan on reading this book you will have to read all of them they have NO ending what so ever. They just go right on to the next series. Thanx happy reading :)

"Welcome to a land where all of your dreams and nightmares are very real- and often deadly."
So says Katherine Applegate, a respected and much loved writer who has soared above and beyond with the previous Animorphs series and many others. Being quite young, at the age of eleven, I distinctly recall the captivating Animorph books from faraway fourth grade, and so I did not hesitate in buying the first two books of this series. I found them to be so much better than what I expected that it reached the point where it was almost terrifying.
David, Jalil, April, Christopher- four normal high schoolers from a normal world. Senna- a supposedly normal person who's supposedly from a normal world. The former four have already realized that there is something that is NOT normal about Senna, but refuse to admit the facts. Soon after, though, they are forced to accept the idea of Senna's bizarre personnel. Dragged unwillingly into the backwash of Senna's unexpected capture, they find themselves doing circus acts just to survive from second to second in the ultimate world of life and death- Everworld.
Land of Loss is hosted by Christopher, a born cynic who's quirky humor adds a touch of laughter and madness to an already whirling universe. While David is hustled into the shadows in this wondrous tale, April and Jalil are cast into the spotlight, as readers realize that there is more to this pair than there seemed to be in the first book. Seeing the Everworld transition through Christopher's wary, wild eyes, what was once contempt soon becomes sympathy and just a little respect for this madcap teen. As the four characters teeter dangerously on the brink of life and death fighting blue heart-eating gods, cannibal nightmares they thought only existed in history textbooks, and continue to dive into the mystery surrounding Senna the "witch", readers keep turning the pages, sucked deeper and deeper with no way of escape, just like Christopher in Everworld. Every little detail becomes something much larger later on in the book or series, and numerous twists and turns are continuously tossed in, one after the other, until the reader feels that nothing in the world can surprise them anymore. K.A. Applegate masterfully leads the reader a merry dance through the pages of Everworld, and if readers were hesitant in the beginning, they certainly should have no intention of backing out now. Through Christopher's eyes, we see both the light and the darkness of the historical marvel Everworld, and, having read it myself, I can assure all reviewers that, for me, there was no rest until I had turned the final page.

"But 'odd' was a synonym for 'normal' in Everworld." - page 116

After finishing this book, this is what I have decided about the Everworld series so far: Interesting. Whenever you throw in multiple gods of the old, the story is bound to be interesting...

This book comes in where the first left off. Nice transition, for I read this one immediately after finishing the first (Search for Senna) - it throws you in the heated battle of the Aztecs vs. the Vikings in the perspective of cynical and sarcastic Christopher, the guy we all like to hate in real life (can we say, jerk?). The four characters (David, Jalil, April, and Christopher) go through many trials and tribulations, including getting captured by the Aztecs, trudging up the blood-caked pyramid of Huitzilopoctli (the Aztec god of war), meeting strange people called the Coo-Hatch, and much more. At the same time, when they fall asleep, they are back in the real world, and they struggle to cope with their duo, bizarre lives.

K.A. Applegate does a nice job of creating pageturners. Throughout the book, the four characters are required to be on their toes at all times (think fast); otherwise, it could cost them their very lives. Nothing matters anymore, only survival (how to get out of this bizarre world alive). And for David, the survival of Senna, the mysterious so-called "witch" as well (although everyone else doesn't think so).

Christopher's snide remarks got a little repetitive, and although that is his nature, a little less could have relieved my slight annoyance (thus the minus one star :/). David doesn't have much of a personality, so I was a little disappointed... April and Jalil have a lot more to them than meets the eye, so I'll be looking forward to reading their sides of the story.

I thought this book was funny! They have escaped Huitzilopoctl, met Merlin fought with Vikings in this book. Christopher adds humor and sarcasm to almost anything. This book in the series is one of my favorites!

In "Search for Senna", the first in the Everworld series, we met an unlikely band of teenage heroes: David, Christopher, April and Jalil. David's mysterious girlfriend, Senna, seemed to have drawn the four of them together at the lakeside right before the world split apart and swallowed Senna up. The four others managed to somehow get caught in her wake and were swept up with her. They were transported to a mysterious universe called Everworld where ancient gods warred with human armies. Everworld is a dangerous and strange place to be, even for savvy, modern kids.

In the second book, "Land of Loss", K.A. Applegate picks up where she left off in the first book-- in the heat of a bloody battle between Vikings and an ancient South American Aztec civilization where ritual human sacrifice is the norm. Entering Everworld is as severe and gripping for the reader as it is for the teens who were mysteriously swept away. Exploring Everworld is a dangerous prospect for suburban teens used to cars, malls, refrigerators, and the Internet. They encounter strange creatures that have also been swept out of their own universe and have been abandon in Everworld. The possibility of ever returning to what is commonly referred to as "reality" seems to be slowly slipping away.

Classified as young adult novels, the Everworld series is by K.A. Applegate who brought us the very popular "Animorphs" series. She has very believably constructed this strange, fascinating and very dangerous world of Everworld without once loosing the reader-- no mean feat when four modern teens have joined forces with ancient Vikings and gone to war against an equally ancient Aztec deity that demands human sacrifice. What makes it so believable are her characters who are delightfully real: the adventuresome, warrior wanna-be David narrates the first book while the class clown and all-around joker Christopher narrates this one. By rotating us through the characters, Applegate allows the reader to delve deeper into each one's head and emotions. We find what drives them, how they're different, how they're alike.

Like any band of teens suddenly thrown together here or there (or waaaay out there in Everworld), fights erupt over almost meaningless little issues, fear and adrenaline run like faucets and arguments erupt. Applegate doesn't shy away from any of this, and that is what makes her books so powerful. When faced with the prospect of having your heart cut out by a filthy, blood-encrusted, mad Aztec priest in some sort of topsy-turvy parallel universe, "fear" hardly even comes close to describing what you would feel. Applegate, however, shows us very clearly what we would feel, but without going overboard into what has been called "splatterpunk"-- rivers of blood and gore-- which would ruin the effect. Far from being wordy and overly descriptive, she tells the tale with plenty left to the imagination.

Yes, wars are waged, people die, blood is shed and spooky, potentially dangerous creatures and people lurk in every shadow of Everworld. It is therefore not a book I would recommend for squeamish or very young readers. However, it is a very well written, engaging and readable series that easily straddles the genres of horror, fantasy, adventure and science fiction (with a healthy dose of surrealism thrown in for good measure). It's also engaging enough to hook in even reluctant readers who don't normally read for pleasure. I've used these books in a book club that I lead in the school I teach at, and not only have I had students beg to go on to the rest of the books in the series (currently there are 12), I've also managed to attract a fair number of students who would normally not pick up a book at all if they didn't absolutely have to. This, if nothing else, speaks to the power of the series and Ms. Applegate's ability to draw in readers. Highly recommended!!

This book wasn't one of the better ones, but in a way it was. Christopher, David, and Jalil start into this war again(as a contiuation). It sorta tells you about the characters more. It has some gruesome war tales, but that just adds to the suspense. It does has some truth too, because the Aztecs DID sacrifice people for their hearts. In this story it introduces Merlin, and his abilities. I recommend this book to people who KNOW how to read depth. But Christopher(the nararator in this story) doesnt go too much into depth. It's funny how a grown adult like KA Applegate can capture the thoughts of tennagers. And Christopher reveals his true feelings for April... and for Senna... will David and Christopher fall under Senna's spells? Or will they resist? You will just have to find out in this one-of-a-kind book series......