Christy Raedeke

When her father inherits a castle, Caity and her parents go to Scotland for the summer to check it out and decide what they want to do with it. While there, Caity misses her best friend back in San Francisco but she makes friend with Mr. Papers, a small monkey that communicates by folding oragami, and Alex, a very attractive boy. Soon she discovers a secret room that contains carvings in a strange language. Once she begins investigating what the words mean, she become wrapped up in a mystery involving ancient Mayan calendars, world wide conspiracy, and a prophecy thousands of years old that mention her. This was a fun young adult book. There were times I was frustrated with Caity, but only because she acts her age. I liked the mysteries of the beginning and the end of the book. The middle dragged a little for me because things started going a little too easy for the characters. It did pick up again and I was able to forgive some of the issues I had in the middle. I think teens would really enjoy this series.… (más)

I really loved the opening of this book. The characters and the inheritance plot were just ridiculous enough to be hilarious and somewhat believable. Caity seems intelligent enough, despite her constant worry about her frizzy curls (with which I totally sympathize).

As the book moved along, I became a bit more concerned and a bit less entertained. Certain things I really loved, like Mr. Papers, the capuchin monkey. He is way smarter than pretty much anyone else in the book. Also, he's just awesome.

On the other hand, the whole prophecy plot and what Caity has to do to fulfill it struck me as absurd. For one thing, Caity is told that she has to do everything, but is actually pretty much led along like a puppet by mysterious adults, who warn her not to trust other mysterious adults. Yikes. It was cool that you really couldn't tell who she should trust (although sometimes it was pretty obvious when someone was evil or good, but not always).

The Prophecy of Days is about the Mayan calendar and the fact that it ends in 2012. According to Raedeke, this may not betoken the end of the world, but merely a complete change in consciousness. To keep evil forces from preventing human's evolving to a new level, she has to get teens to start using the Mayan calendar. She makes a website, sends out an email that sounds like junk mail and it catches on like wildfire. Umm, what? This was laughable.

I have not yet decided whether I want to read the second book in the series when it comes out. Parts were really clever and interesting, but other sections were a bit boring or absurd.… (más)

Review from A Journey Through Pages

This review of Prophecy of Days may just be one of the hardest reviews I've ever had to write. For me there are many different parts to what makes a book great: the prose, the plot, the characters, the research, the believability and the voice, among a few others I probably can't think of now. Unfortunately, some of those parts mean more than others, so even if a book is amazing in many parts, but fails in others it can bring the enjoyability of the book down.

The idea, research and plot of this book were extrodinairy. It was just as complicated and well thought out as The DaVinci Code going deep into the Mayan Calender and Secret Societies that resonated with me. But… I hate to say this because I really did enjoy this book, the prose and actual writing of this book feel rather subpar. There are a lot of "telling not showing" and the writing finds itself being very simplistic in a way that is less stylistic, but more like the author was just trying hard to get from point a to point b instead of having the characters be characters.

It could be that it is because this is not a character orientated book at all and it ends up being a matter of preference, but I really felt like the prose could have benefited from a bit more drive and believability from the characters, Caity especially had a robotic feeling to her, as if she was just going through the motions that a teenaged girl should instead of feeling any passion or ideas about it all.

The thing is, normally with books with this quality of writing, I put them down and I don't finish them, but the idea of this book is amazing and I loved the mystery of it all. I really enjoyed learning about the mystery of the Mayan Calender, so much I myself am going to start looking up to see what day each day is (if people have updated it past 2012 that is) as it goes along with my love of Astrology.

I also really love the idea of kids uniting all across the world.

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Okay, this book is good, but more than likely many would not consider it written well, so this is up to you guys if you want to pick this book up or not. If you can let writing that may not be up to the par of others by, then I highly recommend this book, because it is really interesting and I did enjoy it quite a bit.… (más)