"A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe." — Madeleine L'Engle

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country by Allan Richard Shickman

Title: Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country
Author: Allan Richard Shickman
Published: 2009
Pages: 151
Rating: 4/5
Synopsis: The prehistoric saga continues in Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country, the sequel to the award winning Zan-Gah: A Prehistoric Adventure. In this story, Zan s troubled twin brother, Dael, having suffered greatly during his earlier captivity, receives a ruinous new shock when his wife suddenly dies. Disturbed and traumatized, all of his manic energies explode into acts of hostility and bloodshed. His obsession is the destruction of the wasp men, his first captors, who dwell in the Beautiful Country. When he, Zan-Gah, and a band of adventurers trek to their bountiful home, they find that all of the wasp people have died in war or of disease. The Beautiful Country is empty for the taking, and Zan s people, the Ba-Coro, decide to migrate and resettle there. But the Noi, Dael s cruelest enemies and former tormentors, make the same migration from their desert home, and the possibility develops of contention and war over this rich and lovely new land.

Review: After reading the first book I kind of had an idea of how the writing and how things would be different.

The book starts off some time after the first book ended. Their lives have changed and things aren't the way they were before. Zan has a wife and Dael has changed. He's not himself anymore and many fear what things he may do to himself and others. When the go the land of the wasp people they find that that land can now be theirs.

I enjoyed reading through the perspective of Zan. During that time the men didn't think very highly of the women but he's not like most of them and actually respects them. Like always, he doesn't want his people to suffer so he tries to guide the elders to take decisions that won't harm them. Even though Dael had changed he always tried to get near him and help.

Dael wasn't the person that was described at the beginning of the first book. He doesn't the men should ask the opinion of the women and thinks that Zan is weak for respecting them. He only wants to fight those who caused him so much damage and this leads him to make some dangerous actions, both for himself and his people.

When I first started reading this book I didn't think that I would be so eager to finish and know how everything ended. I liked how everything wrapped up and how Dael changed at the end. This is a book that everyone should read! It's so different from the things that I read that I enjoyed how it was so different!

2 comments:

  1. I just finished the first one and really loved the story. I can't wait to jump into the sequel. Thanks for the great review.

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  2. Thanks for a good review. The third book of the Zan-Gah series, Dael and the Painted People, is nearly finished. Watch for it this summer at the new web address:

    www.zan-gah.net

    I hope you will pay us a visit.

    Allan R. Shickman

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