The Secret of Ka by Christopher Pike
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Genre: Fantasy Main characters: Sara Sashee Wilcox, Amesh Demir Time and place: contemporary Istanbul First sentence: “An entire summer in Turkey alone with my father.” Summary: Sara’s summer seems very boring, spending her time alone in a foreign country, until the day two wonderful things happen: first, she meets Amesh, a boy she almost instantly falls in love with, and second, she discovers a magic carpet. The three of them (Sara, Amesh, and the carpet) set off in search of adventure, finding it on a mysterious island inhabited by djinn. |
This is the first book I got via NetGalley, and I am very sorry to say I hated its guts. While I do know it is a children’s book and I shouldn’t have too high expectations from it, I was nevertheless thoroughly disappointed (and I very much enjoy well written children’s books so I do think I came to it with the correct mindset).
The premise of the book was rather exciting: young girl finds magic carpet and has a series of adventures, it sounded pretty cool and somewhat original (it’s been a while since I read a book with a magic carpet as character). The execution though was unfortunately far worse than I would have expected from such an established writer like Mr. Pike.
For starters, the characters are anything but constant, their behaviour radically changing from scene to scene. Sara is at times wise beyond her years, at others acting like an incredibly silly schoolgirl. Amesh… well, I kinda very much disliked Amesh so I am not sure I’m doing him justice here, but he was so very annoying most of the time: first he complained about everything, plus felt jealous of anything regarding Sara and the carpet; afterwards he acted in such a rough and silly manner I wanted to smack him; then his thirst for revenge clouded his judgement, and so on, only to have him transform miraculously in a perfect mate for Sara later on. A less than believable change if there ever was one.
The relationship between the characters also felt very contrived: they’ve known each other for two days, most of whom Amesh acted like the jerk, and yet Sara is so foolishly in love with him she is making a huge sacrifice in order to save him in one particular instance (possibly endangering the very fate of mankind), shrugging things off by saying something about her love for “a certain Turkish boy”. The same boy who treated her bad not half an hour before and was threatening to kill her own father at that very moment. Does that give a good example to young girls?
The plot itself is rather shaky at best: a good idea, but all the details were rather hastily set together. Including one of my pet peeves, the fact that sometimes Sara just knows things out of the blue (a thing I absolutely hate in books). The psychological impact of any revelation is vastly ignored, making the characters lose even more depth and believability (show spoiler
). Also, we have at least two characters that simply spring out of nowhere, with no explanation where they came from and other such details, for the only reason that they were needed by the plot at that moment, only to disappear later on, and I wasn’t particularly crazy about it either. show spoilerThoughts on the title: Having just finished the book I can confess I have no idea who Ka is (he’s been mentioned, but only vaguely) and what exactly his secret is. While Sara does get to find out a lot of unexpected things throughout the pages, I am not sure which of them is the secret that’s so important the book was named after it. “The Carpet of Ka” would have been a far better title IMHO.
Thoughts on the ending: I am fairly certain the ending is paving the way for a sequel :) “Oh Sara, there are many things that need to be done” and so on. Other than that it was enjoyable, but not overwhelmingly so.
What I liked most: Some of the details were nice :) show spoiler
What I liked least: I thought that most of the dialogues were pretty unauthentic-sounding :( A pity since a huge part of the book consists of them.
Recommend it to? Children and children only.
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i completely disagree with you i loved the book i thought it was original and fun! i am ready for more :)
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