Publishers Weekly
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.
School Library Journal
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.
Kirkus Reviews
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)
