The Gullwing Odyssey
Antonio Simon, Jr
Marco the messenger boy really tries to stay out of trouble. When he is instead swept up into impersonating an ambassador, things in his life get far, far more troublesome than he could have ever imagined.
This novel had some fantastic laugh out loud parts that I couldn’t help sharing with my partner. And then she laughed as well. I really enjoyed it for those moments, and the language twists and the sheer absurdity of the fights that take place.
Light fiction that I just couldn’t put down. I’m not going to profess that it has no ‘deeper issues’, but sometimes you just want to read something to chill and enjoy. This novel is it.
Did I mention that it has dragons? And that they are personified just like humans? And that I love dragons? I felt like I could have done with more from their perspective, but you know what? I was too busy laughing to pay too much attention.
Some of the text just seemed a bit clunky (I feel like this is my favourite way of describing a novel at the moment). The main thing was that some of the storyline elements weren’t wrapped up nicely throughout the novel. For example the contents of the package. I can’t say more without giving anything away… Perhaps this is something that will be explored in the other novels of the Gullwing Series.
I’m giving this 3 stars. Or 4 stars. I can’t decide. It’s not ‘average’, but it’s not ‘outstanding’ either. Undecided.
Unbelievable! The number of hidden twists in this is epic, and I have no idea how the author kept them straight. It’s an interesting and relevant novel to these days – both in hiding your tracks and tracking others.
There are some interesting things going on in this novel. If you wait too long after reading something, you lose those things. It’s not that I’ve waited too long, its that I’ve read about 5 books in the mean time. Oops?
Most of us want to hope that we won’t fall for a Con. Who would get into a pyramid scheme? Hell, I was almost pulled into one as a kid, but it didn’t work in Australia because we don’t have $1 notes to post. The deal was that you post $1 to each person on the list, then you add your name to the bottom of the list. Then the more people you send it to, the more you make back. Now it costs a $1 to send the damn letter, so you wouldn’t even break even!
Ah, the ending. It tidied things up nicely. Perhaps too nicely. Worlds never end like that. So it could be unexpected, except the minute a couple of people do their ‘expose’ thing, then it becomes obvious what is happening around that, and it proves to be inevitable. It was already so unpredictable, in its own way it was predictable.
All the characters feel one-dimensional, which is ironic, given that pretty much only 2D things can slip through the current crack used by Elliot and Madeline. I’m sure they could all pass through too!
This novel started so slowly and got so confusing at times that I couldn’t work out what was going on. I struggled to get into it, and found myself easily distracted. Near the end, I was finally hit with a shock of ‘wow’, but it only lasted a couple of pages.
I always wanted more. It wasn’t enough for me that Stephanie’s brother was dead. I wanted the gruesome details. And it wasn’t enough that her mother wept, or that there was something interesting going on in the deal with her grandparents, that we never found out about.
The back of the novel simply didn’t pull me in, but I took it with me somewhere and I couldn’t sleep, so of course this got read! It should have said something more about past lives, and then it would have gotten me straight away.
The changes between the different perspectives were clear between adults and children, but the two kids, Jesper and Carina, their voices weren’t well defined. I could read one, and because what they saw overlapped, I got confused about how many things had happened.