Zauber der Elemente (1) - Himmelstiefe by Daphne Unruh
The following book is the first of four, up to this point only released in Germany. I listened to it as an audio book. So, now to Himmelstiefe by Daphne Unruh (Translation: sth. like The Depth of the Sky), the first part of the Zauber der Elemente-Series (translation: sth. like Enchantment of Elements). Age: 16 + (girls)
Kiera is the daughter of two famous and very rich parents – and she's absolutely miserable. She only wants to make her A-Levels as fast as possible, to go far, far away to teach Indian kids. But as the last year of school of her life starts, she gets ill. Suddenly, she's stronger and faster than even her PE teacher, even though she sucked at sports before. She grows beautiful hair and can turn invisible, creates a fire just by accident… And, as if this wouldn't be weird enough, her mysterious friend Atropa warns her about being stalked by shadows and trusting anyone with her abilities – not even the new boy, Tim – but rather to flee… into another world, where she's taught how to control the elements. But the adventure isn't anywhere far being over for her...
I really like this book. Great ideas and plausible characters.
Kiera herself is a little whiny sometimes, I especially dislike how she makes her flatmate responsible for everything bad that happens to her. That poor girl really has nothing to do with this! But otherwise, she's actually okay. And has seriously cool powers, like the thing she did at H2O? Really nice. But I can't believe she fell for this “don't tell anyone”. Seriously, why didn't she even question it? If you have powers like that, you have to be properly trained – and you have to make sure that you're never entirely dependent on one person or one way of thinking, otherwise you can be misused.
To continue with the characters. I'm sorry for Tim. He really has to be confused. It's so sweet what he does for Kiera – that he gives up his life to make sure she's okay.
To move on. I don't like Leo very much, he was first meant to be half gorgeous, half an idiot who later on changes to "gorgeous in his imperfectness" and then to get back to "idiot" and later on to "nice". That's confusing. But I must admit I never really liked him. This has something to do with why Kiera keeps him around, not because she really likes him but because she can. I don't like this way of thinking. I never liked Jerome, either. I don't know why.
Spoiler:
Maybe because he wants her to hide something (even though Atropa is okay, and she wants Kiera to keep secrets, too, but somehow (I don't know why) it's different with her).
But maybe it's because he's always is like “I want to change something”. Of course, sometimes changes are necessary and good, but it all depends on what is changed how and why – and why it is as it is now. There usually are reasons for rules. Sometimes, the reasons are so old they simply don't make sense now, but in this case...
However, it's interesting that Delilah, the one that didn't actively decide to adopt Kiera, is nice to K., and the one who decided to do so mostly ignores her. It's plausible, when you get to know the characters, but still, it's funny.
The ideas of the book are great. I like this place-for-you- and house-thing. It's really nice. And the Clarissa-Alexander-thing shows pretty well how people get into these ideologies. Of course what Clarissa and Alexander say is totally wrong, but the way it's presented is interesting. But unfortunately the style isn't very good. She usually repeats the same words over and over again.
In brief:
I give this book a star for content, ideas, characters and last, but not least what I mentioned above about the ideology. It's really interesting. Minus one for style.