Land of the SIlver Apples (II) by Nancy Farmer (Audio)

From AudioFile
THE LAND OF THE SILVER APPLES continues the saga begun in THE SEA OF TROLLS. It is Britain, 790 A.D. Young Jack, a bard-in-training, learns that his little sister, Lucy, so different from the rest of the family, is actually a changeling and his real sister is living with the hobgoblins. Lucy disappears during an exorcism, and Jack descends into the out-of-time Land of the Silver Apples to rescue her and his lost sister. Gerard Doyle gives an engrossing narration. He gives voice to a hobgoblin king, kelpies, yarthkins, elves, and other assorted creatures, human and magical. He maintains a balance between nail-biting action and the tangled mix of pagan and Christian traditions that simmered in eighth-century Britain. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Hardcover: 496 pages

• Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers (August 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416907351

*** I listened to the audio CD version of this. The reader was excellent yet I had a hard time "getting into" this book. I felt that Nancy Farmer was asked to write a Fantasy story (series, actually) and followed a script of an adventure novel--her heart was not in it. There is not the magic of creativity as there is in the Harry Potter novels where the author clearly enjoys living in a fictional world and presenting it.
I have loved her books about coming of age young adults in Africa or the fictional African future or fictional land of Opium between the Mexican and U.S. borders.