Review: Wonderful books!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 5, 2013
This trilogy is absolutely fantastic! As you follow Nate, the protagonist, on his quest to discover secrets of the past and avoid Lightyear, you will be immersed into an exciting and thrilling adventure: there's time travel, loss of friends, decisions that can make a difference between life and death, love, and action-packed scenes. All those elements add up to fantastic books, but that's what's visible on the surface, on the level of plot.These books are much deeper than the surface plot as they books make the readers think about many philosophical concepts but present them in a very accessible way. One such concept is that of awareness. Brandt Legg makes us question our own lives and consider how aware we really are of our surroundings, of others, and of ourselves - and that's a great issue to ponder for a person of any age, teenagers included. Many ideas in his books and the eloquent way that the author expresses them feel like pearls of ancient wisdom in the modern world, and that's incredibly appealing.The nature of creativity, spiritual understanding of the world, material advancement vs. preservation of old traditions, reincarnation, free will, the nature of fear and overcoming fear to reach goals - all these are issues that Nate has to deal with as he pursues his quest. As a reader, you will be right there with him, and you will emerge a wiser person.I adore Brandt Legg's use of language. He is a writer and a photographer, so his keen power of observation doesn't come as a surprise. But it still delights. The language is precise and descriptive without being overly wordy. Here are just a couple of my favorite phrases: "the jumble of yellow cabs" (in Manhattan), "the joys of Dreams Lake helped disperse the morning's traumas," or "time was attacking us from many sides."What I love about Brandt Legg's books is the deeper level of thinking and deeper issues that he invites us to explore, all in a very easy-to-read and entertaining way. "What if?" and other hypothetical questions are always fun ones to ponder, and you will have plenty of opportunities to do that when you read his books. What are the best ways to drive innovation? What societal structures are most conducive to innovative thinking? How does money affect societies? What could the alchemists really accomplish? And why didn't JP Morgan board the Titanic, like he was supposed to? And this is just a quick little sampling of the kinds of things this trilogy will make you think about. What a fantastic journey! Highly recommended.