Review: SUITABLE FOR READERS AGED 9 TO 12
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 18, 2013
It’s the first time I read a book where the main protagonist is as mad as a hatter. It was weird really. I never knew how I should feel about Kiera. She was overly dramatic about the smallest things and she genuinely came across as crazy. I was just as confused about Zakk’s character, and it didn’t help any that he was a whiny wimp. As much as I tried, I couldn’t find anything to like about him. It was pretty cool that the wicked witch turned him into a doll, though, and this added a nice twist to the tale. I unfortunately couldn’t relate to any of the other characters either. The witch queen’s character reminded me of the villains in the tv shows my kids watch on Cartoon Network, but she was the most enjoyable character of the bunch. Her dialogue was natural (in an odd sort of way) and not stilted like that of the main characters. She’s pure evil and the only reason I finished this book.There were a lot of things that confused me and left me with questions. In the first chapter Zakk asks the evil witch queen why she killed his mother. She answers that she did it because his mother never loved his father. Then he wants to know whether she loved his father, and she replies that she is incapable of loving anyone or anything. So here’s my question: what was the point then of killing his mother? I understood why she killed his father, but shouldn’t her motivation for murdering Zakk’s mom be for the same reason? Maybe this will be answered in the next book, but it was the first of many questions in this book which left me baffled.I have to give kudos to the author for not killing off Kiera’s parents in the usual car accident or house fire. That is one thing I simply don’t understand about authors who always feel it necessary to leave their protagonist parentless. At least this is not the case with Kiera’s parents and I applaud the author for her creativity.The writing is simplistic, but doesn’t flow too well with the constant abrupt jumps between different characters’ point of view. The inappropriate overuse of exclamation marks became slightly bothersome after awhile, but it didn’t have a negative impact on the overall story. Kiera’s Quest is an interesting story with all the elements necessary to grab the imagination of readers aged nine to twelve and thus is a read suitable for this age group.