Rocco's Wings (Tales of Terrakesh Book 1) - Kindle edition by Murdock, Rebecca Merry, Chock, Kalen. Children Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

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Rocco's Wings (Tales of Terrakesh Book 1) by [Rebecca Merry Murdock, Kalen Chock]

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Rebecca Merry Murdock

Rocco's Wings (Tales of Terrakesh Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Rebecca Merry Murdock (Author), Kalen Chock (Illustrator) Format: Kindle Edition

21 ratings

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Foreword Reviews' 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award Finalist!

Early praise for Rocco's Wings: "This book was a delightful find, coming of age and a hidden message about tolerance undercut an impassioned story and solid writing." - David Robert Lewis, UK, Netgalley Book Reviewer, January 16, 2015.

Rocco is the only villager with wings. His wings are blue, and at night also bioluminescent (glowing). Rocco is captured by urvogels -- winged human-like creatures -- living on the cliffs of Upper Terrakesh. He witnesses the horrid punishment of urvogels getting their wings cut off - punishment for so-called vanity crimes. The Archurvogel Harpia has decreed that solitary reading and music making are forbidden as contrary to colony or flock principles. Rocco's new friends, Basalt, Vesta, Magna and Iggy are about to stand trial. If convicted, they will lose their wings. Rocco must decide if he should help them, or escape on his own.

Excerpt:

'Does it hurt, coming out of a mammal?' asked Vesta.

Rocco snickered.

'What?'

'No one remembers that. We're too small,' said Rocco.

'How big?'

Rocco lifted his forearm. 'Like this.'

'Our birth eggs are way smaller. Want to see part of my shell?' Vesta pulled a chain around her neck. A medallion dangled into view.

Scooting over, Rocco took the smooth rock-like stone in his hand.

'It's frozen, inside amber resin,' said Vesta.

The flecked shell was no bigger than the tip of his finger. 'It looks like a bird's egg,' said Rocco.

'It's interesting, how things grow,' said Vesta dropping the chain back inside the top of her tunic.

‘I guess Harpia’s not worried about being invaded,’ said Rocco, turning his attention back to the wall. ‘There aren’t any guards on patrol.’

Vesta’s and Magma’s heads bobbed up.

‘They’re inside for the shift change.’ Magma turned back to his collection of bones.

Reading age

9 - 12 years
Print length

270 pages
Language

English
Grade level

3 - 8
Publication date

December 8, 2014
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Editorial Reviews

Review

This book was a delightful find, coming of age and a hidden message about tolerance undercut an impassioned story and solid writing. - David Lewis, UK. --Netgalley --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Rocco's Wings is Rebecca Merry Murdock's first novel. Rebecca works and lives in Vancouver, Canada. She is a lawyer specialized in representing workers and trade unions. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00QSH2V5G
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bark and Howl Press Ltd. (December 8, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 8, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 6098 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 270 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #4,377,740 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,621 in Children's Coming of Age Fantasy Books
- #4,149 in Children's Survival Story eBooks
- #9,571 in Children's Fantasy & Magic Adventure

Customer Reviews:
21 ratings

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About the author

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Rebecca Merry Murdock
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Rebecca Murdock is a lawyer in Vancouver, Canada. ROCCO'S WINGS is her debut novel. Rebecca lives on the edge of the Great Bear Rainforest, and thus has a passion for trees.
A portion of all book sales is donated to protecting wild habitats.
www.barkandhowlpress.com
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Customer reviews

5 star		21%
4 star		33%
3 star		10%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		35%

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Top reviews from the United States

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A coming of age story for readers of all ages

Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2015

Verified Purchase

Rocco is the only being in his village with wings, making him an outcast. Worse, at night, his wings glow a luminescent blue, which can attract the attention of the Urvogels, beings who live on the upper levels of the land. An explorer by nature, Rocco decides to fly to the upper levels. There he finds others who, like him, are winged, but the society there is oppressive. Rocco witnesses others having their wings cut off for what wouldn’t be considered violations at the lower levels.
Rocco’s Wings by Rebecca Merry Murdock is a brilliantly written coming of age tale of love, honor, and bravery, that follows Rocco as he forms bonds with other young beings like himself, youngsters who just want the freedom to think for themselves. A heartwarming story that will appeal to readers of all ages.

Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2015

Verified Purchase

While the story was interesting enough to catch my attention, there were huge chunks of the story missing. Also it had three of the same pages on several occasions. I stopped reading it because it was frustrating.

Amazon Customer

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2015

Verified Purchase

This is an abridged version of the complete review as it appears (http://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2015/03/roccos-wings-by-rebecca-merry-murdoch.html) at my blog dedicated to reading, writing (no 'rithmatic!), movies, & TV.

I almost selected this, but I changed my mind thinking I wouldn't like it; then I read something else by this author and I really liked that, so I went back and picked this one. I wasn't impressed with it, which surprised me because I really liked the other thing I read: Wild cats Volume One. I lost interest in this one about a third the way in and skimmed the rest just to see if it turned around. It didn't.

Of course, this isn't aimed at me - it's aimed at middle-grade (at least as judged by the writing level), and maybe they will like it, but I have to warn you if you're a parent or guardian, that the story is seriously brutal and gory in places with prolonged pages of bullying. This didn't appeal to me, although the story was one of rebellion by the subjugated against the evil overlords, so there was a kind of justification for it.

The story is about a race of people (who, from the sparse illustrations are evidently humanoid despite their traits, who live in the valleys, overseen by the urvogel people - a race of humanoid flying creatures - kinda like angels, I guess. One of the lowland women mated with one of the urvogels and the offspring was Rocco - an angel with blue wings, who comes in as an outsider and wins the affections of the urvogel youth, who then rebel with him.

The worst thing of all for me was the exclusion of females - and this in a novel by a female author! The main character (and hero) Rocco, is male, and this story is very much aimed at a male audience. There are female characters in it, and the "bad guy" is female, but there really is only one token girl (again, I skimmed a lot of this so I may have missed something) who plays any sort of significant rôle in the story) other than the aforementioned bad guy).

I know this is (evidently) aimed at young males, but even so there's a real need for serious female representation. The author says, in the acknowledgements, that she spent four years on this novel, and I find it unacceptable that this isn't written better and doesn't have more female representation. I don't care if it is aimed at young boys. That's still no excuse for excluding half the population from any kind of reasonable representation. The glass ceiling doesn't just exist in industry, it exists from birth and it needs to be smashed as early as possibly. That's the main reason why I'm rating this negatively.

2 people found this helpful

Stuff like (view spoiler)

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2015

Getting into the story was very slow for me. I did not feel a connection to the main character. He could be anyone, other than the fact he has blue wings. The fact that he is bullied speaks to a lot of kids, I am sure, but otherwise... There just wasn't much for me. (view spoiler)

This guy called Jafari is mentioned a few times as if he was a close friend, and then there's his mother which I wasn't even sure if she was still around or not based on the descriptions, but I also could not tell who they were. I found the expression bird eye vision quite repetitive during that time in particular but also later, and some descriptions were a bit hard to follow. I was very confused a lot of times, kept having to reread passages because I wasn't sure how we got from point A to point B and often times I would still be confused. I think the transitions should have been smoother. But to be honest I can't even tell if that's because of the writing or because I lost interest so early on.

But yes, as the narrative developed, I constantly felt that I had missed something, as if I had jumped in in the middle of the story. I can't remember any details at the moment, but I remember feeling very confused and it taking quite a while for the explanation of the things that made me confused to arrive. Stuff like (view spoiler). It took me a while to even get used to people being referred to as 'robes'. That first description of Harpia had me pretty confused.

Besides what I mentioned before about the characters and being confused with the descriptions, there were some things that put me off a lot. Like how a 12 year old kid is able to fight and defeat full grown warriors (at one point he is even described as being stronger and heavier than an air marshall - how?? Sorry, to me that's not believable at all.); how the characters, especially Rocco, are described as being at times a full day without food and it didn't seem to affect them much; I also didn't find the whole wing camouflaging thing plausible, be it with sand or mud - the way I see it, sand or dust or whatever would come off in mid-flight and mud would not even allow flight since it gets so heavy.

The ending was expected and I do appreciate that, although there is a glimpse of something for the next book in the series, it wasn't a huge cliffhanger like we see so often these days and it's great as a standalone book.

At the end of the day, it's a fantasy book for kids. There's plenty of vomiting (what kid doesn't like that, right?), the hero is brave, his companions are enjoyable as well, they are all faced with hard decisions, like whether or not to leave a friend behind and I appreciated the whole dystopian feel to the story. I guess one cannot expect much character development in such a book, so even though I did not enjoy it much I'll stick to the 3 stars because of the audience and because I am giving it the benefit of the doubt that it was my fault for not getting some things because I was distracted, since I could not get into the book. I wish there were more illustrations because they were very pretty. I do wish many young ones will read it, I am sure they will enjoy it and the following books in the series.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

For a full review with spoilers please check out my blog Ana's Lair.

Top reviews from other countries

Martha Spankie

Gripping, vivid story. The characters seem real. ...

Reviewed in Canada on December 24, 2014

Verified Purchase

Gripping, vivid story. The characters seem real. Is there another one after this? I want to hear more about Rocco and his friends. Marty

One person found this helpful

Bernadette

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on June 19, 2015

Verified Purchase

A thoroughly enjoyable read. I look forward to the next installment.

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