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Loading... Cloudlandby Lisa Gorton
None No current Talk conversations about this book. 2   AurealisMagazine | Aug 16, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
The first story is of ice... The shadow-monger dragged itself forwards in shrugs. It was a writhe of tentacles coiling around each other, groping the air then shrinking back. The cloud boy hunched over and pressed his face against the glass, so close Lucy could see his feathery lashes. She watched a tentacle of darkness like a living shadow pour over the boy's shoulder and wrap itself around his neck. Then with one quick sudden tug, the shadow-monger pulled the cloud boy back and smothered him in darkness. The next instant, Lucy found herself staring at blank blue sky.After a year of endless rain, cities are flooded; families are living on rooftops. Called into a world above the clouds, Lucy stumbles across a strange society of injustice, weird beauty, and danger. With a few odd companions, Lucy must travel across Cloudland and face the seemingly impenetrable force of Kazia, the ice queen, in a bid to stop the world from drowning and the dawning of an Age of Ice. Called into the clouds to face an icy enemy, will Lucy ever find her way home? No library descriptions found. |
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Wikipedia in English
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Lisa Gorton is a poet, and that background shows in Cloudland, her first novel for children. There's some beautiful writing here, conjuring images in the mind that make you stop and admire for just a second.
Lucy and her companion Daniel are drawn into a conflict in the clouds, above a rain-flooded earth, evoking a future consequence of climate change. But things aren't that simple. Lucy has been chosen as Cloudland's protector, a title and responsibility she doesn't want and tries to avoid, going her own way. But the ice queen, Kazia, must be stopped, for the deliverance of both worlds.
In Cloudland, there's class-struggle, danger, and a hitherto unknown world to explore, and for the most part it's engrossing stuff. However, I kept being pulled out of the story by the fact that Cloudland and its inhabitants just weren't very convincing as creations, especially, I think because of the story beginning in the real world; in contrast, Cloudland was a bit insubstantial (is that a pun? pardon, if so). And the real world problem of a flooded world was interesting as well, but only dealt with in passing. These may only be problems for older readers; younger readers, I hope, will be drawn into the unique world of Cloudland.