Hazel Lee's Reviews > The Sea of Trolls

I loved reading this book - epic adventure, full of all the traditional elements of a good fantasy: trolls, dragons, warriors, bards, and magic. But the adventure is made better by the complexity of the characters. There are no clear-cut lines between good and evil in this book - only characters that are very human in their imperfection. I think this book does a good job of pushing young readers to think about cultural relativism - or at least introduce them to the concept.

I was annoyed by the fact that Lucy still remains a brat to the bitter end. The scene where Jack gives her the necklace from Thorgil made me want to reach into the pages and give that girl a good slap. You'd think that the ordeal she went through would have changed her somewhat. I wasn't quite sure what the author's purpose was in leaving her as a spoiled and selfish child. On the other hand, I suppose she is still quite young (6?).

Anyway, some Chase notes: I would recommend this book be bumped up to E710. The language is deceptively simple but there is a lot that goes on - too much for our E610 kids to keep track of. Another solution would be to reduce the amount of reading per week, but then we'd be doing this book for two months.