Akea is born into a family of sled dogs and a life that follows a predictable path, but from the day she first sees the lone wolf, Kazakh, Akea knows her future lies beyond the safety of her home. Kazakh is well aware of Akea's destiny and the pack laws he will break to help her reach it. Regardless of the challenges ahead, he must make sure this young husky will be ready, even if it means his life.
It's my pleasure to be one of the bloggers kicking off the blog tour for Akea - The Power of Destiny today. Many thanks to the author and Rachel Gilbey from Rachel's Random Resources for inviting me and for my copy of the novel. Akea is a story which features huskies and wolves so I had to share it with my wolf-loving ten year old daughter. She has written her own review which you can find below my thoughts about the book.
Akea - The Power of Destiny is only a short book but there's certainly a lot packed into it! We first meet Akea as a newborn pup; even then her father could tell that she was special although he wasn't sure why. Her early days are straightforward until a wolf appears. Their owner's gun scares it off but something changes within Akea and she realises she doesn't belong with the huskies.
This is necessarily a fast moving story which sees Akea grow quickly and before long she has met the wolf, Kazakh once more. She begins to learn more about her destiny and discovers she isn't just a husky and has volk (wolf) blood running through her veins too. The pack lore and history is intriguing and something I can well imagine being expanded upon in further books. If I had to make a small criticism it would only be that I would have loved to have known more as the ways of the volk and their intertwined relationships with the huskies of the area is a fascinating premise and I feel would have benefited from being explored in a little more detail.
The story is based on a series of adventures that Akea has, some of which are darker than others (there is one scene which may perhaps be a little adult for some children but actions are mostly hinted at rather than expressly described). I'm obviously not going to give away any of the story here but it's well written with vivid descriptions of both the animals in the book and the land they live in. Elizabeth Jade was only 14 when she wrote this book but she clearly already has the knack for writing exciting books in which her animal characters (humans are so secondary here as to be almost inconsequential) fulfil roles that allows them to retain their wild nature but still develop relationships that young readers will want to follow and know more about. I thoroughly enjoyed sharing a chapter or two a night with Maggie and the beautiful illustrations by Anthony Wallis are an added treat.
Akea - The Power of Destiny is an enjoyable book because I love stories with wild wolves and I liked how their personalities were shown in the story. I found the book a little confusing especially as the names are quite hard to pronounce but as it went on it became less puzzling. Kazakh was one of my favourite characters as he was brave and risked everything for Akea. My favourite character was actually one of the villains in this story because their actions were so shocking and evil!
I wished the story was longer as I found some of the drama could have taken more time than it did. Overall I thought this was a good book to share with an adult or for children aged about 9 and over to read alone.
You can listen to Elizabeth Jade read some excerpts from her book on Youtube;
Reading from Chapter 1 - https://youtu.be/umBbQRv2GI0 (2 mins 44 secs)
Reading from Chapter 6 - https://youtu.be/7weWzfS-Sng (2 mins 26 secs)
Reading from Chapter 10 - https://youtu.be/G0j5djycPrs (2 mins 17 secs)
Akea - The Power of Destiny can be purchased from Amazon UK or Amazon US. Don't miss the rest of the blog tour, details are below.
About the Author
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Website – www.elizabethjade.org
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