City of the Beasts

CITY OF THE BEASTS: Isabel Allende: HarperCollins: 2002:406 pages

City of the Beasts has all the elements of a horror novel – scary creatures, suspicious characters, steaming jungle with dark shadows and lost civilizations. But the book reads more like a lengthy plot description of a book than an actual book. There is little description or character development, characters have unexplained random powers that they discover just in time to solve a problem in the plot, etc. Only inexperienced readers will find much to engage or thrill in this novel. Maybe, if this is the first time you’ve ever encountered a story with jaguars and mysterious Indians and piranhas and 12-year olds solving mysteries that are too hard for the grownups, you would like this book. But only maybe.

SH