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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780741433046
ISBN number: 0741433044
Label: Infinity Publishing
Manufacturer: Infinity Publishing
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 483
Printing Date: June 23, 2006
Publishing house: Infinity Publishing
Sale Popularity Level: 2238092
Studio: Infinity Publishing
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Twelve-year-old Morgan is alone in his hiding place, the basement of an abandoned building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, when he witnesses a strange unearthly event, one that leaves behind a remnant of itself in the form of a necklace composed of eleven stones, ten with images cut into them. Picking up the curious necklace, Morgan unknowingly is picking up a string of great powers, and is thrusting himself into the midst of a battle of epic proportions, the losing of which would not only bring the end of his young life but the termination of entire worlds.
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Rated by buyers -
I loved this book. For starters, the story is creepy and M.C. Escher strange. The choppy style--short sentences, short chapters--gives it a "writing as fast as you're reading" energy, that invites us to follow a slum kid, 12-year-old Morgan, out the bedroom window down the fire escape into a world of real and imagined nightmares. And listen to the language describing an prophetic apparition he experiences in an abandoned building on Manhattan's lower East Side: "The light transformed itself into something resembling more membrane than light, a translucent oval, an egg of sorts, in which two live forms struggled with each other, twins in a womb raging against each other to keep the other from being born alive."
Morgan is the child of a drunken, jailed father and a tired mother. What he discovers in the building is a necklace with eleven stones of the title. Each has a power--to enter other's minds, to become invisible, to fly, to shoot flames from his mouth, etc.--that makes him ask, "Am I holding one puzzle or eleven?" He will need whatever help he can get for this is a surreal world where nothing is as it seems. There are the death-links, Shriek, Dead Land, Grumbling Man, Eating Clouds, Unraveling Fog and Drifting Caves (with side references to God, Darwin and the nature of change). And who is the young woman destined to become the "Keeper?"
Philip Carraher has created the most outlandish of graphic novels, for there are no pictures except those in our imaginations and they are more fearsome than anything we could possibly experience through our senses. "In an instant, it had been transformed to a land of statues and stage settings. The people, anticipatory faces still smiling as their eyes gaze up at the Delacorte Clock above them, stood frozen as if painted on the air. Pink air. ...the lack of movement in the world transformed to violence in the subsequent moment as, with howls of rage, the creatures of the Delacorte Clock, the mechanical animals designed to charm, leaped from their overhead perches down to the ground below, expanding both in size and in animosity...the desire to destroy coruscating in their angry metal eyes."
Plus there is a deeper theme. "Who's there?" begins Hamlet. "How long before the kid goes the same way as his father?" this novel asks. What ensues is an epic battle for strength and liberation from an imagination of incredible magnitude. "What if we could unbook ourselves by gaining a new consciousness, a new consciousness that frees us to go to other realms as real as this one?" Morgan overhears a preacher intone. I wouldn't change a word of this book. What a journey. I couldn't put it down, and this is only Book I. "Whatever is coming is already on its way." My dreams will never be the same.
Rated by buyers -
Morgan is a somewhat sad and lonely twelve-year-old boy living in a poor neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. After an argument with his mother (who he thinks doesn't want him around and wishes he was gone) he goes to a rubble-filled basement in an abandoned house. There (after a battle between two fighters he thinks he might have dreamed it was so unreal) he finds and picks up a strange stone necklace. Picking it up does two things, First, Morgan is suddenly one of the most powerful beings in existence (although he doesn't know it right away) as each stone confers upon the wearer of the necklace a great power (great strength, ability to fly, ability to heal, etc.). There are ten power stones in all. In addition some of the stones hold solar systems in them. Second, Morgan is suddenly in danger for his life for others want the necklace and are very willing to kill him to get it. They would have succeeded right off too if not for the arrival of the Protector of the Necklace, who appears to save Morgan's life.
Morgan decides he'd rather be rid of the necklace than in constant fear of attack and tells the Protector he'd like to give it to the true owner, a six-year-old girl/entity known as the Keeper. Together, like Dorothy and the Scarecrow seeking the Wizard, the two start off to find her. The adventures they have along the way form the bulk of the book and what adventures! There are the assassins known as the Creeping Specks, the Golden Ash, the Death-links and more. The most dangerous assassins being the Pouch Carriers, large toad-faced killers who are impervious to death since their life-force is not inside them but rather in a pouch around their necks. They travel in a pack and, when entering battle, one of the pack goes to a safe place with all of the others' pouches. The rest cannot therefore be killed since their lives are somewhere else other than the battlefield.
The book takes us from one adventure to another, from New York City's Central Park (and a great battle between the Protector and the creatures of the Delacorte Clock) to the ship/gate leading to the Old Dominion (where the Keeper resides) to the dark fog-like atmosphere of the Dead Land to 1870's New York City(Morgan travels through time)to the underground caverns of the Durawoo (the caverns are inside a gigantic living beast) and on. In some cases Morgan must gain entrance through tricky gates to get where he has to go and the gates can be entered only by solving a tricky "puzzle". (I couldn't figure any of them out.) Then, just when you think the adventure is over with a great climatic (seemingly) battle, there is more.
The writing is wonderfully picturesque, even lyrical at times, and the entire book is crammed with the writer's rich imagination and originality. (There are no fairies, elves, unicorns, dragons etc. in this book. Rather all "new" creatures found nowhere else, such as the Teeth-chatterer, the Durawoo, the Moon-man, and more.)
Readers of Clive Barker's "Abarat" series and Stephen King's "Gunslinger" series (the very first four books anyway) should relish this new series. (This is Book One.) Overall great job.
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