2014-02-07



Welcome to my stop on the tour for Root Bound (Emma and the Elementals Volume 1) by Tanya Karen Gough.  Root Bound is an upper Middle Grade fantasy adventure recommended for ages 10+. The tour is to run February 3-14 with reviews only.  Be sure to check out all the details and the tour schedule on the tour page.


About the Book:

Root Bound is a fast-paced, action fantasy novel about a young girl finding her place in the world through a series of adventures involving magical creatures, and a journey to the centre of the earth. Root Bound is both a topsy-turvy riff on traditional literary children's fantasy and an allegorical coming-of-age tale.

Emma and her father, a jazz musician, are always on the move, travelling from place to place as her father’s work demands. Their new home, however, is different. There’s a frightening woman who lives down the hall: she bears an uncanny resemblance to a witch. A mysterious light comes from her apartment, and a small boy seems to be trapped inside.

School in this town is no happy place either, with an odd principal and a gang of girls who make tormenting Emma their special project. And strangest of all is the fact that there seem to be brownies - basement brownies, in the air vent in her bedroom. They are searching for the Wanderer, a powerful being who can help free the Crown Prince of Under from the black magic prison that holds him. Emma travels through the brownie burrow to the valley of Hades to visit with the goddess Ceres, following a series of clues that lead her across the sea of memory to the centre of the world. There, on an inhospitable rock floating in a sea of steaming lava, Emma must find a way to free the prince, release her mother from the sea of memory, and restore magic to both the brownie burrow and the human world above.

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REVIEW

So there is a lot going on in this little novel. Emma is a very self sufficient little girl dealing with sneezing houses (brownies) and witchy neighbors all by herself. She doesn't see her father much because of his being a jazz musician and so I was never quite sure if all the things that happened were the fanciful imaginings of a bored little girl or a real magical story (relatively speaking.) It's magical either way. Emma has to fight with the brownies who first think she is a monster and then revere her as their savior the Wanderer. And in fact, she is a wanderer of sorts as she and her father have traveled from town to town to town in search of work.

The idea in this novel is that houses are alive, they are "root bound". I loved this. The idea of a house, comes from people their dreams, plans, pictures. It's built with bricks and wood, and plaster. But then it gets a history and begins to put down roots and eventually, the longer it lives, it's roots begin to tap into the magic that is in the Under. So the house is alive. Now I happen to believe, for me, that you have to make friends with your house. Sit with it, get to know it, it's night sounds, it's day sounds. This idea of the house putting down roots it really sat well with me. It was my favorite part of the novel.

I think Emma handles everything thrown at her really well, better than an older child would mainly because she still believes in magic, though she does try to dismiss it. At the same time she's trying to rationalize everything that happens and that she sees, she is carrying around a "storybook" with the stories her mother used to read to her. It's one heck of a book, too because it contains stories from all different mythologies and countries.

I had a little trouble with the beginning, I felt it was a little slow to take off, but then things took off and the pacing was steady. This is a good middle grade book, especially for girls. It touches on many things from dealing with the loss of a parent to being bullied, to loneliness. This is the first in the series.

I received a review copy of this novel in ebook form for the blog tour. I was not compensated for my review.



About the Author:

Tanya Karen Gough owned and published The Poor Yorick Shakespeare Catalogue from 1997-2007, earning a strong international customer base of world class academics and high school educators.

Tanya was also a contributing editor for the Internet Shakespeare Editions at the University of Victoria (BC), audio advisor for the Sourcebooks Shakespeare textbook series, and theatre reviewer for Playshakespeare.com. Tanya grew up in New Hampshire and currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Author Links:

 Blog | Facebook | Goodreads | Twitter

Giveaway:

$25 gift card to bookstore of choice, or $25 in books from TBD. Open worldwide.

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This tour was organized by CBB Book Promotions

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