Hardcover ( )

I was enchanted from the start - wonderful characters, clever writing, thought-provoking scenarios. I was surprised to learn it was a YA book - thoroughly enjoyable for adults, too! Bravo to Terry Pratchett and to Stephen Briggs for his excellent narration. ( )

Immediately upon finishing the e-book version of this, I turned to my wife and said, "You wanna go to B&N with me? I need to get this for Jack." Jack is my 14-year-old son.
This book does a great job of raising some fundamental questions (the existence of god, the "fairness" of what happens to us in our lives, what (if anything) makes one civilization better than another, and what does "better" mean). And it raises these questions in a non-pedantic way; they just grow out of the story. And while Pratchett does come down on the side of realism WRT the theological questions, he doesn't do so harshly, stridently, or disrespectfully.
Pratchett ends the book with some notes, the last of which is to encourage kids to think. What could be better in a YA novel?

[Audiobook Note: Stephen Briggs does his usual stellar job.] ( )

This book had the most tragic and depressing beginning of any book I have ever read. The main character, Mau, loses his entire community in a tidal wave on the brink of his manhood celebration. If I knew that if you start out so sad, you can really only go up, and that is mostly true. I found the story exciting and compelling, the characters interesting and complex. It is a teen book, although the two main characters are written as 13, they do not feel 13 to me, they both behave as older teens, except in their timid response to the possibility of romance. The book explores topics of religion, our search for meaning in tragedy, the European invasion of lands during their expansion, our "need" for things, our relationship with science and discovery; yet even with all these topics, themes, and moral issues it was still exciting and engaging. I would have given it 5 stars except the end kind of fizzled out in an unsatisfactory way. ( )

http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2010-01.html#nation ( )