Forest of the Pygmies

by Isabel Allende, Blair Brown (Read by), Margaret Sayers Peden (Translator)

Overview

The final installment of Isabel Allende's celebrated trilogy of the journeys of Jaguar and Eagle soars with radiant settings, spirits, beings, and the transformation of an extraordinary friendship, as Alexander and Nadia embark on mission in Kenya that begins as a search for elephants and ends up exposing a system of injustices.

Alexander Cold knows all too well his grandmother Kate is never far from an adventure. When International Geographic commissions her to write an article about the first elephant-led safaris in Africa, they head—with Nadia Santos and the magazine's photography crew—to the blazing, red plains of Kenya.

Days into the tour, a Catholic missionary approaches their camp in search of his companions who have mysteriously disappeared. Kate, Alexander, Nadia, and their team, agreeing to aid the rescue, enlist the help of a local pilot to lead them to the swampy forests of Ngoubé. There they discover a clan of Pygmies who unveil a harsh and surprising world of corruption, slavery, and poaching.

Alexander and Nadia, entrusting the magical strengths of Jaguar and Eagle, their totemic animal spirits, launch a spectacular and precarious struggle to restore freedom and return leadership to its rightful hands.

   

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781094158518
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	01/05/2021
Series:	Memories of the Eagle and the Jaguar Series , #3
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Blair Brown is an award-winning narrator and a Tony Award–winning actor. Besides earning several AudioFile Earphones Award, she received the prestigious Audie Award for Best Fiction Narration in 2020. She has appeared on Broadway, in film, and on television in numerous miniseries and TV movies and received five Emmy Award nominations for her starring role in The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.

Isabel Allende was born in Peru, raised in Chile, and became an American citizen in 1993. She is the author of twenty-four books, translated into more than forty-two languages, with more than seventy-four million copies sold. She is the founder of the Isabel Allende Foundation to support the empowerment of women and girls worldwide.

Hometown:

San Rafael, California

Date of Birth:

August 2, 1942

Place of Birth:

Lima, Peru

Website:

http://www.isabelallende.com

Editorial Reviews

Forest of the Pygmies by Isabel Allende, trans. from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden, wraps up the trilogy begun with City of the Beasts and Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, of which PW wrote, "Allende's complex heroes, suspenseful tests of courage and the mystic aura that surrounds the story add depth and excitement to a classic battle of good versus evil." Now Alexander, his grandmother, Kate, and Nadia are bound for Kenya, where Kate is on assignment to write about the first elephant-led safaris. But they also discover a ring of slavery and poaching. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 7-10-Isabel Allende's trilogy (Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and City of the Beast, both HarperCollins) comes to a satisfactory conclusion in this volume (Rayo, 2005). The adventures of Nadia and Alex take them to Africa where they survive a plane crash and bring about the downfall of an evil dictator, thus freeing his enslaved pygmies. Although the plot is simple to follow without having read the first two titles in the series, the fantastical elements of Alex's and Nadia's mystical abilities such as talking with the animals and becoming invisible are simply part of the tale and not explained. Blair Brown reads the novel, most of which is in narrative form, at a quick pace reflecting the emotions of the story, varying her tone and sound level when appropriate. Her diction is precise, and she speaks the African names with ease. She uses several different accents to differentiate between the characters when necessary. A good choice where the first two novels are popular.-Claudia Moore, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Allende takes her readers into the wilds of Africa in the final installment of her fantasy adventure trilogy that follows City of the Beasts (2002) and Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (2004). This story begins when 18-year-old Alexander Cold and his friend, Brazilian native Nadia Santos, join Alex's salty grandmother Kate, a journalist for International Geographic, and two photographers on a safari in Kenya. When a Catholic missionary persuades them and a local pilot to help find his colleagues who are lost in the remote jungles of Ngoube, the heroic group endangers their lives in an attempt to save them. While packed with hair-raising near misses and vivid glimpses of Africa's landscapes, tribal customs and wildlife, this is stiffly written, didactic and relentlessly descriptive. The characters are distinct, but undeveloped, and Allende awkwardly explains rather than reveals their interrelationships. Alexander and Nadia have totemic animal spirits, but since the origin and nature of this phenomenon are never explained, it's all rather baffling even within the context of Allende's magic realism. A rich but ultimately disappointing travelogue. (Fiction. 12-15)

Kirkus Reviews