Gill JamesRezensionen

This book was okay. Not my type of read, but interesting. Glad I received it.

As a disclosure, it's hard to give an accurate review of a book in a series that you haven't followed. This is the second book in the series and I believe the fact that I have not rad the first book contributes significantly to the fact that I both did not enjoy and had difficulty following Babel. Secondly, this is not a genre that particularly draws me in. In spite of this, however, I was not impressed by this book. I felt like James was trying very hard and Babel seems forced. I was not impressed enough to read the first book and that is perhaps the biggest downfall for a book in a series. If a reader has no desire To continue the series what is the point. I am giving it 3 stars however, because I think a young adult that started with the first book might find this series appealing. Especially if they are the type to devour books and aren't too terribly picky.

FUturistic and complicated tale of prophecy, unique look at how the source of a prophecy can become lost, and knowledge of the source may change how people value the information. How is divine inspiration conveyed? This book covers a lot of ground, dealing with issues of racism, discrimination based on economic situation, disease, ethnicity, and religion. At center is the ethical dilemma of government regulation of death and life span. The Peach Child is prophecyed to unite the peoples of the future earth and to get them to work together to spread economic prosperity to all regions. The Peace Child is a reluctant hero at best and must struggle with himself to live up to the prophecy.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255 [...] : "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

An OK book. A little hard to understand some parts if you haven't read the first book (like me). Overall, a very interesting read.

I enjoyed reading this book, it is somewhat fast-paced and has alot of action. I didnt understand small parts, so i would recomend reading the first in the series, first but it kind of reminds me of some james patterson books. I can't wait to read the whole series.½

Babel is the second volume of the young adult adventure trilogy Peace Child. As with her previous volume, The Prophecy, Gill James maintains a pace of action and ideas well-suited to the future history genre. The characters and relationships are generally well developed, although somewhat lacking in multiple dimensions. James style is to keep conflicts few, shallow, and short-lived. This may be a problem for readers needing visceral or spectacular experiences from a book, but I find it a welcome relief from the 'blood and guts' approach of many sci-fi movies and video games.
The Prophecy and Babel offer an interesting approach to Earth a millenium and a half from now. Once the third volume, Peace Child, is added to the serious, this should make a good trilogy for young adult future history aficionados.

Babel is the second book in the trilogy of the Peace Child series. I am starting a bit late - picking up the story on the second part, Babel.
The first thing that struck me was the amount of unique words that the author uses and for a reader just coming into reading it may initially be confused. However, the author has rather thoughtfully added an appendix at the end that has a glossary of terms to help you out. However, the glossary also includes a roll call of the charaters and some world events so it is an essential read to get up to speed and I relied on this to keep me right.
I enjoyed the story and this world in which we find the characters is interesting - people are 'turned off' at a certain age and people are segregated into different sections. There's enough thought gone in to this story other than the the narrative itself that the world, although light years from ours, is so real and in depth that it is a world easy to fall into.
I will read the first novel and I look forward to the third.
If you like your sci-fi well thought out and fancy a good story then you might want to check this out.

I found The Prophecy a challenging book to read. Gill James introduces some fascinatingly mind-bending concepts, but does so in such a simplistic manner that the book sometimes came across as trivial when I first began to read it. Whether intentional or not, the style trapped me and I found myself tearing through it in just a few days. Considering that this was my first read of an ebook, I think this says a lot for the author's ability to get a lot of ideas across to a wide audience.
Prior to this book, I would have said that my sci-fi reading days were over. The freshness and excitement of the story reminds of the teenage days when I first discovered Edgar Rice Burrogh's John Carter series (Thuvia, Maid of Mars, etc). I highly recommend The Prophecy as a good read and look forward to Volume Two of ThePeace Child Trilogy, Babel.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book for me is that there really are no "good guys" or "bad guys". The story is all about reconciliation and even the intentional destruction of a large space ship and its crew is described without resorting to lurid descriptions. In other words, Gill James handles conflict very well in this book.

This novel is very interesting. The plot is unusual and not typical for many books. There is a poisonous could hovering over this planet, the people have to escape below the surface of the planet. There they wait, unable to do much of anything until the cloud disappears. Marijam, one of the main characters, finds herself pregnant. She leaves her home and travels to Zzone, where she is lauded as the Mother and her child the child from a Prophecy. Kaleem is that child. The novel continues at a fast pace from that point on and the reader will not be bored as he/she delves into a world very different from our own, but with key similarities. The reader will enjoy the main character, he is very likable and easy to relate to. The setting is very interesting and will help to pull the reader into the novel. This book is a very good read and will be easily enjoyed by young adult and adult reader who like fantasy novels.

Pulling the plug, switching off. Same thing different time periods, only there is one HUGE difference. The people being switched off are healthy, very much alive older people. Its hard enough watching a loved one pass on, but I could only imagine how hard it would be to have to say goodbye to a vibrant, functioning member of society.

Kaleem is what is called a Peace Child, AKA in our terms, an ambassador. His life has been pretty screwed up thus far, his life growing up, the mystery behind his own birth, his parents now committed...It's a lot for one Peach Child to process. In order to fit in better with the planet he is now on, he even disguises his appearance to make things a bit easier on himself.

Right about the time Kaleem find true love, he also learns that his mentor is about to go through the switch-off ceremony. This is the damper in his glowing source of happiness, and this poor kid needs all the happiness he can find. ENTER THE Z ZONE - a not so popular place on his home planet and things are being stirred up. With all the chaos in Kaleem's life, can he possibly find the strength, determination and desire to correct the wrongs that have been happening there? What will it mean to his life if he does?

There are a few things about this book I would like to talk about. The first thing was that I did enjoy the changing points of view throughout the book. I like how it changed back and forth, I really felt that I got a good feeling of all the characters and who exactly they were and what their motivations were. The chapters were well labeled so it was easy to know what was going on before you got too far into it.

The writing style was very easy on the eyes and easy to comprehend - no tedious over-wordiness to gunk up the flow of the story, I appreciate that. While I do love beautiful prose from time to time, I also enjoy my sitting back and reading a straightforward book.

Now, where I had a few problems in the story. I really had a hard time trying to figure out the actual purpose of the switching-off ceremony. It says it has to be done, everyone accepts it, but never an explanation that I understood anywhere in the book. I got the phrase...it is what we pay for living such a good life on this planet...it's not an exact quote, but as I read this in e-book form, I'm not going to try to find the exact line...That is pretty much the best description I got out of the entire story. Maybe I missed something, but I don't think so.

Also, I guess I missed something by not reading the first book, and this is a shame. In a series book, the story should continue from one book to the next, but each book should be able to stand alone as their own book without needing any other books there to help explain or guide the readers through. This book left much out, and I felt a bit cheated that I really didn't know everything that was going on.

I'm on the fence about going back and reading the first book, and even less sure about going to read the next book. While there were some things done well with the book, the few things that were done wrong with the book were really wrong, and it kind of killed the feeling of it for me. But I will say, the relationship in this book is really adorable, and worth the time to discover.½

I stayed up late because I had to finsh before I could sleep. It kept me interested most of the time. Still trying to find out what else is kaleem to do.
Kaleem is living with his grandparents that he just met. His mother and father just got committed together and are living on Zandra planting all the oak trees.
Kaleem meets old school mate Rozia that he had a crush on and they become a couple. Lot of people dont believe is mother story, so Kaleem wants to go to zzone to prove her right. Kaleem also he knows he needs to bringzzone and normal zone together again. He finds his old friends of his mother and him. He trys to learn and fit in the zone. Kevik wants the fame and glory of peace child but he thinks with violence he can bring changes for the better. there is still a lot of questions that I want to know hopefully the third book will be out soon. I was given this ebook in exchange for honest review.

I enjoyed the how the story flowed together and look forward to reading Babel next.
Terrestra has a poison gas cloud above them. So the people moved under beneath in caves and they had plastic tubes where they could go up and see and walk around but had air that was breathable. They were alone did not have people visiting thier planet and people could not travel to other planets. They were never got sick and they never got pregnant except through lab. They were afraid if people from other plants would bring illness with them.
One day the poison cloud was gone and people slowly began going outside again and living on the surface.
Around that time Marijam found herself pregnant and did not understand how theStopes treatment had failed with her. Gabrizan also disappeared around that time before she could tell him. Marijam was worried about her father loosing his Job as head of education. So she ran away to the Zzone where the poor and different lived. Because no one got pregnant and she had a rare book that told the Tower of Babel story. The people of Zzone thought she must be Mother and her child of Prophecy the Peace child. She was treated special and they welcomed her and child.
Years later Kaleem and his mother worked and lived in the old caves in the normal society but Kaleem always wondered who is father was and why did his mom hide out in thier home.
An Elder picked him up to be the next Peace child and set him up learning different languages and different cultures because learning was easy for him. Kaleem looked different and felt a little different from everyone else.
Around that time illness came back and Kaleem was one of the first cases but he got over it. His mother ended up in a coma and many others died.
Some of the Elders wanted to go to different planet and use their medicines to get thier people well. But the Heads all refused and shot down ship with the vacines and medicine.
So Kaleem was sneeked into the plant to learn about them and see how he could help them learn about him.
I am not doing Justice to story its long and this is the first of three books. it keeps my interest the whole time and want to see how the next book goes.

This is a book about the Peace Child prophecy. This is a future time when the earth is divided into zones. The population has grown so that they now use a "switch-off" to keep the numbers under control. When people reach a certain age the are "switched-off", or put to death. People living in the outcast Z-zone are against this and the Peace Child is supposed to come and unite the zones and stop the killing. Kaleem is thought to be the Peace Child and this is the story of his struggle to find out if that is really who he is, and to work to bring a change to the world he lives in.½

This book is the second book in the Peace Child Trilogy. That being set I would recommend that you read the first book, Prophecy as without some of the background information, this book can be confusing.
The main character is Kaleem, the "peace child" and the action centers around his falling in love with Rozia and their trip to the Z-Zone, a place on earth (Terrestra) where those who chose to not live in the "normal" zones have gone. One of the major conflicts between the zones is the "Switch-Off". Those in the Normal zones have advanced technology and medicine that prolongs life so that people live longer. As a consequence, a law was created for all of those who reach 100 years of age to be "Switched - Off"; a euphemistic way of saying killed. This bothers Kaleem. As the peace child one of Kaleem's objectives is to reunite the zones and that is one of the reasons why he and Rozia travel to the Z-Zone where people have live a much cruder life, seem to be more caring, adapting for themselves without the use of as much technological advances and are very much against the concept of "Switch-Off".

Although Kaleem is a character who is trying to do his best and very admirable in his quest the book is confusing, jumping from section to section. References are made to Kaleem's dream about the Tower but it is not clear as to why these dreams are so frightening. Part way through the novel goes back to the past and to the young woman who wrote the Tower of Babel book that is referred to. Her story is interesting and riveting and follows logical sequence until the book comes back to Kaleem and his situation. The reader never really learns why this particular books so important to everyone.

If this is meant to be a copy yet to be edited that is one thing, but because it is already in publication in print, I doubt that what I received was an ARC copy. It needs much editing and revision, especially for misspellings and grammatical errors. This was a great distraction to the reader, and the primary reason for the low rating.½

Set in the future, at first one might think it was science fiction, but from what I read it is more of a romance novel. I have to admit, though, that I didn't finish it. I didn't find characters, story, or style compelling.½

I found this a fascinating novel, if a bit--not naive, but... trite, perhaps. There were bits that I didn't understand, possibly because I haven't read the first book in this series. I enjoyed the read, but I probably won't pursue this author.½

This novel is for readers who enjoy complete fantasy worlds and like to utilize their imaginations. Everything appears to be going smoothly for Kaleem, except that he doesn't particularly know what to do with his role as the "peace child". The reader will be able to make inferences to the real world-euthanasia as a growing force in the medical fields, the "outcasts" living on the edges of society, etc...the author cleverly integrates these concepts into the novel. The novel itself is easy to understand, the plot and characters are memorable, and the idea is a fairly unique one. Kaleem faces many of the problems mentioned in the synopsis with bravery; he is deathly afraid (apologize for the pun) of his mentor being euthanized, but he isn't sure how to broach the subject or how to stop the event from taking place. The reader will enjoy sifting through Kaleem's past with him as he processes unknown memories and forgotten events. The secondary characters work to give the novel comedic relief, an antagonist, and Kaleem's advocates. The reader will find him/herself finishing this novel too quickly. The novel is terrific for young adults/adults who enjoy fantasy mixed with bits and pieces of reality.

2nd book in series set on a distant planet.