Gregor 1. lowlands, Suzanne Collins, RBA, 2011 Great novel. Of which grow with time and memory. Of soft starting and ending in a very high place among the best novels for young read this year. A history of always told in a subtle way different. And the recovery of the earlier work of Suzanne Collins, author of the masterful, definitive and infinite trilogy of games from hunger.
Gregor is eleven years old and it seems that summer will be a succession of boring evenings in the care of his ailing grandmother and her two-year younger sister, Boots. By chance come to the Lowlands, a magical place where you will be immersed in a race against time to stop a war, fulfilling a prophecy and resolve issues that plagued his past. Suddenly, the summer of Gregor has become a huge adventure.
Warning to potential readers: those who look to Gregor same as found in The Hunger Games will be disappointed. First for their age group, starting at age ten. Second, Gregor is something else. In this first volume of the adventures of Gregor are no moral duality of the Games, the complexity of the characters and situations, moral and ethical discourse of the master franchise. Gregor is an adventure novel. Point. There is nothing masked a willingness to build an adventure of a lifetime, we face a classic novel with typical elements that have defined the adventure genre from the start there with Homer as the search, the return home, the hidden hero, the family secret, prophecy, the group of adventurers, etc.
All that we have drunk in Tolkien, in the Potter saga, in the Arthurian legends, in the fantasy novel, science fiction, in the Narnia saga (saga which, incidentally, I hate and hatred with many of my strengths and one day I'll talk about it), in so many movies ... the classic argument with a different element. Starting with Gregor and his sister. Eleven and two years respectively. Children. And while Gregor perhaps behave a little too adult or too hero her sister is a child of two years with all its advantages and its flaws (most advantages, because as it highlights more than once, Boots is a virtue and who knows no fear and, therefore, free of prejudice.) The inhabitants of the lowlands are the patterns that we have read in other novels. Different people, but strangers. Suspicious, but good people in the background. But the better the world around humans, these companies set up by animals and tradition outcast evil cockroaches, spiders, bats and rats. The inhabitants of the underworld, night, the waste. Survivors. It is curious to see how Suzanne Collins has managed to give so much life these characters up on a page the point of tears. This is original in the tradition. Is a new point of view and a new way of telling what we have read after times. Gives prominence to what other authors reject. And get great results. In particular the two cockroaches and a rat. To remember.
Suzanne Collis is good. Very good. And it shows in her first novel. A familiar story, read, but again subjugated by addressing such issues as the value of children, the senselessness of war, inadvertent hero, the pain of growing up, family, etc. Although the novel begins at a tempo a bit too slow, falls into a rhythm come to be read with interesting and great interest. And justice is acknowledging it, the RBA editing assistance. With a beautiful form, a good body of letter, but, and here I am something resabidillo, a translation that would normally take one last look. But not from enjoying this novel. And it's not forget that lowlands is the first chapter of a series of five. The adventure begins. It opens up a world. Now is when Gregor begins to grow and with it, books.
And I am eager to continue. Gregor I know will get a lot of reading.
PS Yes, many days in silence. And for several reasons. If you want to know a quick visit to my other blog and know what happened. It is not necessary, but you can make funny.
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