Urchin Of The Riding Stars (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
It seems as though every book with anthropomorphic animal characters claims to be an “adventure in the great tradition of Watership Down and The Wind in the Willows.” Unfortunately not all anthropomorphic animal books meet the standards set by the tradition.There are several good things about the book: It is well-written overall, the characters are generally believable, there’s lots of political intrigue (Many of the themes in the book come from Macbeth), and the artwork both on the cover and at the top of each chapter is outstanding. If it were to stand alone, it is a reasonable book for its target audience of children 8-12. Mistmantle should appeal more to the younger end of that range, for children who have graduated from the Eaglesmount Trilogy (Cherith Baldry) but might not be ready for 400 pages of Redwall or the darker subject matter of Watership Down. It is a reasonable run of the mill fantasy, it keeps you turning pages but has some problems with the plot and setting.Now, the problems. Minor spoilers below... the plot is pretty predictable anyway.First of all, in the setting nights with lots of meteorites are particularly special, and Urchin is found on one of these nights, which is made out to be this big, powerful secret. No one is supposed to know that Brother Fir and Crispin saw him fall from the sky because... well I don’t know why, and neither do they. This fact doesn’t seem to hold any real bearing on anything. Even when other characters find out, they say “Oh now that’s interesting, what a secret” and thats it. Husk gets a little worked up about it due to a vague prophecy, but he has other, more valid reasons to want Urchin dead so “he fell from the sky” seems trivial.Speaking of prophecies, this plot device is overused and uninteresting but pervades many fantasy books, including Mistmantle. Most of the prophecies made in the book have to do with “taking down a ruler.” Boring, cliche, and totally unnecessary given the actual plot. Husk was playing a dangerous game and probably stood a reasonable chance at succeeding if he could keep the loyalty of those doing his dirty work. But when you’re so self-serving that those around you can taste it, failure is inevitable. However it also would have been unlikely that Husk could have held onto power had he taken it. He had realistic plans, but you need a non-cliche bad guy to pull off a successful coup and maintain power. A prophecy wasn’t necessary to keep this guy out of power and didn’t really play a strong role in the battle.Also the “evil place” in the palace was a semi-acceptable plot device to push Husk over the edge from ambitious captain to regicide, but the ultimate solution was really lame.(view spoiler)[ The only priest in the entire book lights some candles and prays there for a while and suddenly it’s not evil anymore? It’s not like Husk wasn’t already defeated by characters actually doing something useful, like Padra, who turned the whole woodland against him. (hide spoiler)]
Erik Karhan 7-1Urchin of the Riding Stars (The Mistmantle Chronicles, #1)tThis book reminds me A LOT of the Redwall series. The setting, the plot, and the animals are all basically the same in this story. The only real difference is that the main character is a squirrel, not a mouse. Besides that, the plot is the same. A squirrel is found as a baby on the shores of Mistmantle, a magical place of animals that lived together and could talk. He then grows up to be a heroic fighter for the Island, and finds the defacer of the king’s throne. tIn Redwall, the same thing happens. A mouse defends his people’s land from the evil villains attacking it. It’s just too similar to be a coincidence. The book is basically a copy of the Redwall series. However, both books have an excellent writing quality, where the story is told by several characters, and then from a third person all-knowing narrator at other points in the story.tThe thing that makes this story good is that the animals have the same personality as humans, but have different cravings and lifestyle. The fact that they can also talk ads on to this. The story seems to be set in a more medieval time to me, because the weapons they use are swords and spears, and there is nothing for light but candles or fire. Also, there aren't that many active castles these days. tIf I had to rate this story 1-7, I would give it a 4. This is because the story is too similar to the Redwall series. Other than that, the writing style is OK and the story-line is great, making it a good book for ages 10 and up.
What do You think about Urchin Of The Riding Stars (2005)?
Llegué a esta serie de libros por las preciosas ediciones que Villegas Editores distribuye en Colombia. No fue un error haberme dejado llevar por lo que mis ojos me aconsejaban.La historia de la Urchin, el enviado de las estrellas fugaces, y todo lo que ello desencadena en el reino de Mistmantle es realmente apasionante y acelerada. McAllister no se pasa en detalles, por el contrario, hay momentos en que sientes que todo ocurre demasiado rápido y te das cuenta, estas ligado al libro y no quieres dejarlo de leer.Está repleto de personajes particulares, de lugares hipnotizantes, de aromas seductores, de enseñanzas y de recordatorios importantes, por lo cual creo que su público puede ser muy amplio, aunque el tono acelerado de la historia (yo lo sentí, por lo menos) me hace pensar mucho si un pequeñín podría seguirle el ritmo.Amo a Padra, con alma vida y corazón.Vamos por el segundo...
—Esteban Parra
This didn't feel like your typical YA novel: there were many, surprising and bloody scenes that the author painted over and over again, clearly enjoying themselves, and it was also strangely moody and dark, and I admit I really got scared couple of times and had to put the book down for a moment before I could continue, heart desperately bumping away. The tyrant in this book and world was cunning, hidden in the plain sight, clever and cruel, thus dangerous. The fight smouldered in the hearts of the animals, but for the most of the story nobody knew who they might have to target it at. I was thinking reading this would feel pretty much like getting started anew with the Redwall-series. How wrong I was. This book wasn't beautiful, the world was dim and stony and the most important times and places were dark. Another feature I came to greatly enjoy about this (the first obviously being the overall mood and scene setting mentioned above) is that the protagonist of the book, Urchin of the Riding Stars, was not terribly important. The story didn't really tangle around him, he didn't get surprisingly popular or particularly good at things, instead there were a couple of characters that teased him because they had grown up beside them, and those, that didn't like him because he seemed weird due to the different colour of his fur (there were racist opinions expressed, so to say) and even we, the readers, didn't really get to follow him through his everyday life - instead we jumped a bit onwards in time, and most of Urchin's character development and growth in his skill set was just mentioned as secondary features to consider. There were way more important things happening: the kingdom and its habitats' happiness was at stake, the lives of innocents threatened and somebody was not playing fair.
—Niina
My 10-year-old loved this series so much that she read it twice, then asked me to read it to her at bedtime. It's got old-fashioned heroes and a truly evil villain, but she was so caught up in the story that she started naming her stuffed animals after the characters in the book. I have to admit: it's pretty darn good for a book about talking squirrels and otters.That said, the villainy will be too intense for younger children. As it was, I had to explain what culling is -- it's being used by the bad guy on the slightly misshapen or otherwise out-of-the-ordinary baby animals. My daughter completely missed that the queen was being poisoned by her sinister lady-in-waiting. No one in the book ever identifies the continual application of the special medicine as poisoning, even after the lady-in-waiting is forced to take her own medicine and doesn't survive.I think the upshot of this is that adults could enjoy the book on one level, while older kids could see something else in it. I'm glad we got the chance to read it together, so we could talk about the bad things that happen.It also made getting her to bed easy, since she was eager to share the next installment with me.
—Loren
