Now this book is a blast from the past. I actually encountered it via my husband's book self, and he acquired it from eBay, saying it was his favorite back in 5th grade. This book can still be found new and cheap on Amazon. It was written in 1985 by author Alfred Reynolds, who has only published two books. He is currently a flight instructor at an airport in Maine. This is definitely what I would consider a renegade read. I'll review this one to remind everyone that just because a book may be old enough to be sitting in a library book sale, does not mean it isn't a great read. You never know what kind of treasures you can find if you give them a chance.
This book I did find to be a treasure. It is a little strange, being a science fiction book. This is not normally my genre, but I thought I would give it a try because my husband loved it so much. I must say he was right to love it, especially as a 5th grader. This book has flight from hang gliders, pterodactyl like creatures and large lizards that the government uses to control citizens. I mean, who wouldn't love that? Yes I know it sounds quite strange, and it is, but the writing is good and you are quickly submersed into this strange world. The main character is named Karl, and in the beginning of the book he is preparing for his right of passage into manhood. In his village, Karanga, they are all kite flyers (hang gliders), and they use the kites to hunt the terry (pterodactyls). They also have vast mountains that they fly through. As Karl's right of passage, he must kill a terry. This makes him so nervous, that he not only fails to kill the terry because the spear he was using cracked, but he ran leaving his hunting partner Bron. The terry then killed Bron. The punishment for this was exile across the desert, or death. The desert was thought to be uncrossable, but in being a coward Karl decides to risk the desert and use his kite to fly as far as he can. This is where the book really picks up. Karl not only survives crossing the desert, he finds his courage and strength there. After crossing the desert, he finds the town Rika lives in, or rather Rika finds him. She raises sheep with her family. There it is a poor community highly controlled by a ruthless government that uses lizard creatures controlled by olive groves. The smell of the olives calms the lizards and makes them easy to manipulate. Karl seems to fall for Rita and teaches her to fly like him. They do not have the kites in Eftan like Karl had in Karanga. The longer Karl stays, he soon realizes he must rescue the citizens from the government and their lizards. So he ends up flying back to his home in Karanga and recruiting the citizens to fly back to Eftan with him. They use their kites to burn the olive fields so that the Lizards can no longer be controlled. The reason it is so much easier with the kites is because they can just fly over the lizards that protect the fields. Throughout this story Karl has to overcome his past failure and find his strength in order to save the people of Eftan.
This is a great story of overcoming ones fears and finding strength when you feel you have none. I found it a surprisingly good read, to the point I was surprised this author did not have other books such as this picked up. My husband did recently write him to sign his book, and he was kind enough to sign it and to share that he has been working with Disney to try and possibly make a movie from this book. I think it would actually make a pretty interesting and unique movie just like it did a book. I think that is what I liked so much about this book, in some ways it at least was a story that had not been done before. So many books these days are just a different version of something already out there, and movies have gotten even worse about being repetitive or remakes. I think if you are looking for something different, this book would definitely be worth the few dollars you spend on it and then some.
