Rodrigo regarded me. "Do you see all these men before you?" I nodded. "If we are lucky, half of us will return. It is the way of the sea. And that, my friend, is what I call adventure."
- To The Edge of The World, Michele Torrey
This is possibly one of the best books I've read for school this year. It was suspenseful, joyful, sad, action-packed. It had it all. Even romance.
So, at first I thought the book was just okay. I didn't read more than the assigned two chapters per day, but I didn't dread reading it. In fact, I found myself thinking of the story, wondering where it was from, then realizing, oh duh, it was from this book. Okay, yeah, I always wanted to know what was going to happen.
Then one day I had no clue what to do. Bored out of my mind. So I read this book. And I read, and read, and read. At first it started with me wanted to read more so I wouldn't have to read it this weekend. Then it came to me not wanting to move. I love it when a book gets progressively better by the end. It's very capturing. I read ten chapters in one day because I was hooked. The chapters were short, but in school-terms, I was five days ahead of my assigned reading. That doesn't happen often.
The beginning was intriguing. The story opens up by the main character, Mateo, burying his parents. Now you're curious. How did they die? Will Mateo survive? Was he left with anything? As the story goes on, Mateo meets Espinosa, a man looking for willing men to set sail under Ferdinand Magellan, the man credited with circumnavigating the world. Mateo has nothing, so he agrees to go. The rest of the story is his journey.
I don't think the author missed one detail of the things that actually happened on the sea back then. Major storms, incredible heat, sickness, wars or trade with Natives, starvation, insanity, mutiny were all topics. This is keeps us on edge, all the time. But romance is also entwined in the story for a short period of time. Mateo falls in love with a Native, and for some chapters we are wrapped in their love story. Michele Torrey truly did an amazing job.
The book is also sad. Not a tear-jerker - but sad. It's a historical fiction, so the real people she included died how the real person actually died. People who we didn't want to die, die. And other "bad guys" who, to us, it doesn't matter if they die, die. I'm not saying all the characters die, by the way. I'm just saying that there are some people we wish could have lived.
I also enjoyed the way it was written. In other historical fictions that I've read the language was particularly hard to understand and therefore quite boring and monotonous. Not this book. It's written in a modern way, but still gives you he 'feel' of that time period.
MAJOR PLOT TWIST NEAR THE END. Totally blown off course. I don't want to spoil anything, but the book takes a sharp left turn, then slowly gets back to the right path. This twist was a nice change, in a way, and it wasn't totally irrelevant, but definitely shocking. It was probably, definitely the most suspenseful moment of the book.
The end was very satisfying. I am 100% in love with the ending. The author went back to where the book started, and used almost the exact sentence. Not the parents dying, by the way, but still on the first page of the book. It had an amazing sense of completion. No left-over strings. No what ifs. No confusion. It was perfect!
Overall, I am very pleased with this book. If you wanted a comparison, I would say it was as satisfying as cold milk after a yummy cookie. Simply delightful.
