City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende, translated from
Spanish to English by Margaret Sayers Peden, is a wonderful mysterious book.
You read a story about disappearing people and the misspoken legends of the
Amazon. Alex and Nadia find out things about themselves that they didn’t know
about each other.
City of the Beasts is about a city boy names Alexander Cold,
nicknamed Alex, whose mother is very ill. His father ships him off to go stay
with his grandmother, Kate Cold. When he reaches New York to stay with her he
flies off with her to the amazing Amazon Rainforest for an International
Geographic hunt. A Beast has “inhabited” that area and the people of the land
want to know what is happening. He meets a young native named Nadia who quickly
becomes his friend; they take a trip through the Amazon also through their
selves to find answers to the Beast. This is the journey of a lifetime that
will keep you wanting to read more.
I actually loved this book; it kept me reading it even
though the beginning wasn’t much of a thriller. As I keep going through the
book I find out something’s about the Amazon and the people who lived there and
who still are. This book also explains how outside contact with the Amazon, and
those living in it, have had various problems with greedy businessmen and
accidental explorers exploiting these humans to unknown diseases. So this book
is good for people caring about the environment and others who want to know how
the ‘Indians” survived without dying out
Book Review by NaDine P.
