This is book #2 of the Children of Eternity series and the sequel to Forever Young that I talked about last month. In that book, a 10-year-old girl named Samantha Young wakes up on a strange island with no idea of who she is or how she got there. The island is populated by about 50 children and lorded over by the Reverend Crane. Samantha eventually discovered that the reverend had found the Fountain of Youth in a cave on the island and had been using its water for over 350 years to keep everyone on the island as small children he could easily manipulate.
Five years later, Crane and his henchman Pryde are dead. Samantha, now 12--if the math of that doesn't make sense there's a good reason--has spent the last five years as the de facto leader of the island. Now that she's starting to hit puberty, she begins to get anxious to go to the mainland and look for answers about her past.
Except on the night she decides to sneak out to get on the boat and go, a massive storm hits the island. Too bad the kids there don't have the Weather Channel to know when a hurricane is coming. Samantha takes shelter in Pryde's old house, where she finds remnants of the atrocities he committed over the last 350 years. She also finds some clothes belonging to her mother and a photograph of her and her family.
Once the storm passes, Samantha goes down to the beach and finds a fishing boat washed up on shore. Inside she finds a man with the same darker skin complexion and black hair as her. When he finally comes around, he claims that Samantha is really his niece Lucinda who went missing five years earlier and that he's her Uncle Hector.
As overjoyed as Samantha is to finally have some answers to her past, her friends Prudence and Rebecca are skeptical. And perhaps with good reason...
This story is a little bit longer than the first one and not as action-packed. Most of the action involves Samantha and her friends being chased by some of Pryde's hellhounds who survived from the last book. It might also be frustrating for some that not more clues about Samantha's past are given. There are a few more pieces to the jigsaw puzzle, but even some of these seem dubious. But then again this is a series and if you were to learn all the answers how could there be more books, right?
Besides Samantha, the character of Rebecca takes center stage as she becomes something of a second-in-command to Samantha. Samantha's friend Prudence gets less time in this sequel, spending much of her time in a big hole in the ground.
Still there is some nice character development. As they say, the plot thickens. For 99 cents the writing is pretty good too. I'm just saying.
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Monday is another Phony Photo...
2 comments:
Is there a reason for the way the characters are named: We have Pryde (Pride) and Prudence (that one is obvious) and I know Samantha means "listener". The first two had me thinking that the author is intentionally naming these characters for possible human traits.
I'm 99.9% positive you're overthinking it.
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