3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oddly Entertaining, November 15, 2006
This review is from: Orphans of Chaos (Mass Market Paperback)
I found this book to be intriguing. I did not necessarily love the characters, if fact I dislike most of their personalities, but I still feeled concerred for them. I still wanted to know what was going to happen to them. The very uniqueness of the story makes it slightly difficult to read, but more enjoyable to get through. What do I mean by that? Well if you don't have at least a cursory knowledge of greek myths and their pantheon of gods and godesses your going to have problems and get lost. You'll probably still enjoy the story, but you can start figuring out where things are going if you know a little background. Also, all of the characters have quite a few names that you must keep straight to figure out who is doing what to whom. I feel the complexity is a plus to the story, but if you don't want to have to think about character relationships you probably wont like this book. There is also a great deal of physics involved in this book . . . I assume accurate physics, but I really wouldn't know. I found it fun to try to work theses section out, but if you didn't want to you could easily skim over them. If you actually know a lot about physics they would probably be really fun sections to read. So, you see this is a complicated book, I liked that and I think it leads to a lot of interest and fun. However, if you don't want to think while you read I wouldn't try this book. Take a chance on something different and read this book.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
wonderfully entertaining, December 28, 2005
The preceding customer review and the Booklist review summarize the plot very well, so I won't repeat what they've said. I'll just comment on what excellent adventure and mystery the novel offers. Who are these children? Why are they being held prisoner in a boarding school? WHAT are they?
Highly imaginative and suspenseful, this novel is what a fantasy should be (and very few are): an intriguing situation, a dangerous threat, and wonders of the impossible that are made real. I enjoyed every minute of it and am waiting for the conclusion with great anticipation.
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14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another weird and excellent story from John C. Wright, November 19, 2005
Wright continues to amaze. This book is not really anything like any of his previous ones, except that it's wonderfully written.
Somewhere in rural England, there's an orphage. The orphanage houses only five children-Victor, Amelia, Vanity, Colin, and Quentin. They're significantly outnumbered by the staff, and despite receiving an excellent education, they're kept in almost prison-like conditions of discipline and restriction of movements. They've never made even an unsupervised visit to the nearby village.
Oh, and they all have unusual powers-different and apparently incompatible powers. Quentin's a warlock, Victor can change the molecular arrangement of matter, Amelia can see in four dimensions. If the physical laws of the universe are such that Quentin's powers can work, how can Victor's also work under the same set of laws?
There's also some mystery about their exact ages, and the larger mystery of where they come from. And now that they're approximately in their late teens, or perhaps early teens, or, just possibly, early twenties, curiosity and determination are overcoming deference to the adults they increasing regard as jailers. When Amelia and Quentin manage to eavesdrop on a midnight meeting of the Governors and Visitors of the school, all bets are off and they're in active rebellion against their captors.
But they still know only tiny pieces of what's going on.
This is truly excellent, although I need to mention that it's the first half, or possibly the first third, of the novel, not the whole thing. This volume doesn't end; it stops at a crucial point. Part Two will apparently be entitled Fugitives of Chaos. (That's less of a spoiler for this book than it might seem.) Nevertheless, Wright has delivered before, and I do highly recommend this one.
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