| Title | : | Changelings (The Twins of Petaybee, #1) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0593056124 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780593056127 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2005 |
CHANGELINGS
They are Ronan Born for Water Shongili and Murel Monster Slayer Shongili. Twin brother and sister. Children of Yana and Sean. Children of Petaybee. As such, theirs is a destiny deeply intertwined with the sentient planet that is their home. For Ronan and Murel are more than human. Like their father, each can transform into a seal and converse telepathically with the planet’s creatures–such as the friendly otter whose life they save one day from a pack of ravenous wolves.
But the twins’ bravery has unforeseen results when a visiting scientist witnesses their startling metamorphosis and becomes obsessed with their capture. To protect their children, Sean and Yana send them to stay with a powerful family friend on an orbiting space station. But no one realizes that Ronan and Murel hunger to discover the origins of their shape-shifting talent–and that their search for knowledge will place them squarely in the path of peril.
Meanwhile, Petaybee is changing–and much faster than an ordinary planet’s natural evolution. It appears that portions of the sea are heating up and a landmass is suddenly rising from the depths. To investigate the startling occurrence, Sean heads out to the open water in his seal form. But the newly unstable region holds untold mysteries–and the potential for disaster.
Changelings (The Twins of Petaybee, #1) Reviews
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An exciting story about twins with a special ability that must be kept secret. It was reminiscent of some of the Disney sitcoms I used to watch, or the Australian show H2O: Just Add Water.
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Great buddy read with Joanne.
A fun, light and entertaining read with a great concept, a good plot and unique characters. Take one sentient planet, two wonderful children who can morph into seals, a sacred turtle with a very big and strong but gentle guardian and throw in a pair of furry wild cats to serve as nannies and protectors along with a lot of very chatty playful seals and you got yourself a real treat. The interactions between the animals and humans were absolutely charming. I loved those the most. If you are ever in a need of a smile on a cloudy day, i suggest you pick this book up and give it a try.
If a Shonghili's comment won't bring a smile to your lips when he says: "I flash my furry butt at you, big fella, and flap my hind flippers in your general direction. I don't want to see anything hotter than a teakettle for the rest of my life", I'm sure seeing a wild snow leopard trying to remove a dirty diaper without scratching the kit's pelt will do the trick. -
Okay, this sentient planet thing...it took me awhile to place it. It has roots in Greek mythology! So once I figured out where I'd heard it before, I was able to enjoy the book. Once again McCaffrey is a master of characterization. I loved Sky, the otter! Ha! I could picture all of his actions, and it was just like all the otters I've ever seen in my life. If you want a book just to enjoy, this is a great choice.
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Changelings is the result of a collaboration: Anne McCaffrey (of The Dragonriders of Pern fame) and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough (The Healer's War). Although both are fine writers, I found this book less than the talents of either, rather than even just the sum of their abilities.
The story takes place on a sentient planet, Petaybee, as seen through the eyes of the Shongilis, one of the many immigrant families that combine Inuit and Irish heritage. The children of Sean and Yana Shongili are twins, Ronan Born for Water, and Murel Monster Slayer. Their father, Sean, is a selkie-to-human changeling, a trait passed on to the twins.
Petaybee is itself creating a landmass for the people and animals with which it feels a sense of harmony. Volcanic activity--terraforming--is the process of raising land out of the ocean, much as Michener's Hawaii described for that island. The idea of a planetary consciousness appeals to me in these times, especially that it might get to veto things that would harm it.
Yet I found too many sections of the plot predictable, somewhat like a stage play in which the theater-goer sadly finds that each of the props, if there, are certain to figure in the drama. Things are seldom there just for ambiance, mood or the deliciousness of illuminating the setting or a character's choices. And, despite the precocity of the twins, some things are just too pat, too cute.
Moreover, to me the writing often seemed unedited. For example, in the Prologue, the word and phrase repetition almost made me quit. Here's the first paragraph:
"Petaybe was changing. It was always changing. The quakes and eruptions, avalanches and slides, great winds on land and sea, even the ebb and flow of the tide, brought about fundamental changes in the planet's surface, in the way it was. The people who lived on Petaybe knew and accepted this. If it had not been for the changes, jump-started and accelerated by a terraforming process begun only a few decades before, no one would have been able to live on Petayabee. The people made songs about the changes, celebrated them."
Maybe I'm picky. Maybe it's because I'd just come off reading the amazing book Savvy by Ingrid Law, also a fantasy-adventure. Maybe I was having a tough week. But maybe not. I think there is less here than meets the eye. Another story based on a hoary formula. -
A wonderful buddy read with Laura! This book is great for both young adults and adults. I loved it for its light reading qualities. Nothing extremely scary. Those parts that were scary did not last long. I love animals and always imagine what they would say if they could talk. The authors do a great job of translating animal speak to make it very believable. I like the idea of a sentient planet. There were parts with real suspense as well as parts with incomparable beauty. The descriptions of the planet and its people are lovely. The authors did some cultural research for Hawaiian and other cultures for this book and their hard work shows.
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This is labeled and marketed as an adult novel but it's really a middle-grade novel. I might have liked this if I was 10-12. It felt like a kid interested in the science fair wrote this not adults. You could skim this book and not miss anything. Repetitive, no action, telling not showing writing style, no emotional investment, dialogue reads like a 4-6-year-olds where they are all about them and have little understanding of what's going on around them but they are put in charge. Oversimplified young child-like writing and reasoning.
I couldn't stand any of the characters, they were all very immature but talked big at times with a capacity they should not have had and the adults were just there to point the two main characters in the direction they needed to go next. The kids were the real ones in charge and considering they were 7 then 10 doesn't say much. They had zero growth in personality or thinking/understanding. Considering where they live, how they were brought up (without consequences for any of their actions and letting them be in charge), and who they/their parents were this lead to absolute stupidity and silliness that was annoying and eye-rolling inducing rather than funny or cute.
There was no real conflict, nothing really happened that was exciting or emotional. -
It's always good to visit a place you enjoyed for the second time. You anticipate more of the same and hope you won't be disappointed.
After reading the Petaybee series, I was thrilled to learn that there was also a Twins Of Petaybee series, and having read the first installment, I was not disappointed. The sentient planet now has two more unique residents, Ronan and Murel Shongili, the selkie twins. They and their father Sean can transform into seals when in water, and they use their gifts to explore freely.
I enjoyed watching three years of the twins' lives (from age 7-10) and how they had to pick up the fight their parents began to protect Petaybee from the Company who only wants to exploit it. It was also good to see familiar characters like Colonel Yanaba Maddock-Shongili, Sean Shongile, Clodagh and of course Nanook the track cat and Coaxtl the clouded snow leopard.
Those two are the only reason why I can't give five stars. Those blasted cats kept changing genders every ten pages! In the previous series, Nanook was established as a black MALE track cat. Coaxtl was a FEMALE snow leopard, and even thought once on how she could tell that Nanook desired her for a mate. When we were reunited with them as babysitters for the infant selkie twins, both of them were male. Then Coaxtl went back to her correct gender and Nanook followed her! By the time the book ended, I didn't know what they were :-). Ah, the perils of writing a series.
I also didn't like that Diego Metaxos barely got mentioned, and Bunny Rourke slipped through so fast I almost missed her. I saw a fleeting reference to Bunny's baby- I can only assume that she and Diego got married and this is their offspring because it was never mentioned. When you create a series that captures the imagination, you have to keep up with the folks you teach your readers to love.
That notwithstanding, I'm off to read the other two in the trilogy :-) -
Anne McCaffrey is another author I struggle to put down once started, so this has been a reading Sunday to round off my holiday.
This is a new Petaybee book about the Selkie twin children of Yana Maddock and selkie Sean Shongli and how they link with otters and other parts of the sentient planet. I loved Sky the otter. -
So, take a set of twins - Ronan Born for Water Shongili, and Mural Monster Slayer Shongili - that can shape change into seals, just like their father, then a sentient planet that is slowly trying to give birth to an island, an Otter that thinks it's cool to be friends with the twins, and a scientist that discovers them, and kidnaps the Otter's family, in the hopes of luring said twins so she can study them!
What you end up with, are parents that realise that their, now eight year old, twins have become too adventurous for their own good, but too young to realise the dangers they could face, and so they need to send them off world, into the safe keeping of their friend Marmie, where they could explore somewhere very different to their planet, and while they are young enough to be able to do so.
They go with Marmie to her home, a space station, where they meet young children their own age, and learn about other planets in their system.
For three years they stay there, becoming good friends with Ke-ola, a boy whose people were originally Island people on Old Earth, but had become like the twins' people, the IP's: the Inconvenient Peoples.
Ke-ola's people were moved - more than once - in order that the Company who owned their lands could access whatever minerals were found there.
Ke-ola teaches them about his people, and shows them holo's of how beautiful their first home had been, with laughing, dancing people, enjoying the sunny islands with an abundance of all types of plants and flowers.
He then shows them the place they had been moved to next - a colder, heavier, world where their life is much harder, and their traditional flora and fauna struggle to survive.
Next, they are shown the grim ecobubbles, where his family were living now, and the contrast from their home world couldn't have been more different!
At their school, a new teacher arrives, a Professor Mabo, who's grandson, Rory, is one of their school friends. She's not nice to Rory, her family, or the other children, but tries to be friendly with Ronan, ignoring Mural, until, one day in a dissection class, Mabo comes up behind Mural, making her jump, and cut her finger.
Ronan sees Mabo take a tissue that has Murals blood on it, and wonders why, only to find out, when the twins try to rescue a Honokuan sea turtle, that Mabo was going to experiment on. It came from the same world as Ke-ola, who joined with the twins in the rescue attempt.
Unfortunately, Mabo had known they would try this, and snuck up to the twins, and pushed them into the tank, where they immediately changed into seals.
Ke-ola had escaped the room and raced off to get Marmie and her security people, who turned up just in time to rescue the twins. It turned out that Mabo was one of the scientists who had tried to kidnap the twins on Petaybee!
In the meantime, on Petaybee, Sean, the twins' father, had gone to look at the volcanic mass that the planet had been slowly extruding in the middle of the ocean, but was caught in a blast that knocked him out. Just as everything was turning black, he sees some moving lights where there shouldn't be any.
Marmie takes the twins back to Petaybee, where they learn that Sean is missing. Ke-ola had come with them, as well as the turtle, and they volunteered to go with the twins, to see if Sean could be found.
When, with the help of their friend Otter, now named Sky, and his family, and their cousins the sea otters, they find the place of moving lights, where the sea otters tell them there lives deep sea otters and, only after promising these mysterious creatures that they'd keep them a secret, did their father suddenly appear among them, just waking up, and thinking he had only just been knocked out.
As their mother, Yana, and their friends Marmie, Johnny, and the crew of the yatch, manage to get them out of the sea, they realise that Petaybee is ready to give birth to so much mass, that they were in danger of being killed.
Ke-ola, though, has a plan and, through the history of his people, dances and sings, then gets everyone else to join in with him, and this helps Petaybee to give birth, in a much better, more controlled manner, than she had been doing. She gives birth to an island, one that she planned for Ke-ola, and his family, to live on.
I did enjoy this book, and loved most of it, though I couldn't give it the five stars I might have done, because there were times throughout it, that I actually got a little irritated with the tone used.
I know it's the story of the twins but, quite frankly, there were sections where I felt we were expected to read it as if we were young children ourselves. This just annoyed me as, although the twins are young, they were born aware, and they were much more forward than their peer group, so using an almost baby-talk kind of tone, felt wrong to me. It didn't match to Anne's usual standards for me. -
Not terrible. A little simple; I thought there would be more detail about the sentient planet. And the cover was a bit deceiving. I thought the two humans on the cover were the twins; if that was the case, they're much, much younger in the book than portrayed on the cover. I suspect perhaps those were supposed to be their parents instead? I know "never judge a book by its cover" but first impressions are important and I certainly was expecting a pair of adult twins.
There was also a few typos involving whether the big cats - Coaxtl and Nanook - were male or female (the first few chapters kept switching it around until the authors seemed to settle on female) and that sort of shoddy lack of attention to detail rankles me. If I, who had never read it, caught it immediately, what was their editor doing? Maybe this is addressed in a later edition; the one I read was the first edition, printed in 2006.
However, it caught me up enough that I'm interested in what happens to the kids in the second book. -
I'm not sure if I liked the start of this second trilogy as much as I did the first. Mainly because if found the twins just downright annoying, especially to start with. At no point did they actually come across as the age they were supposed to be and acted more like stroppy teenagers.
The start of the novel, with the twins being introduced to Petaybee and them growing up, was interesting, but felt like one long prologue. The middle section, with them living on the space station, was just a bit tedious and even their 'kidnapping' was boring in that you could see it coming a million miles away. But the last third of the novel definitely lifted it back to the status of the first, with everyone caught up with Petaybee's birthing of a new land mass.
A decent enough read and entertaining enough to keep the pages turning. -
Anne McCaffrey is an author I always enjoy reading. I really loved the way this series started although I felt it lost a bit of its appeal as the books went on.I do find it to be a very fascinating world with great characters but I am not sure I love the formula of the story telling. But I still quite like it.
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It is one of those stories, written for children, in which the main protagonists are irritating, adults are irrational just so that the kids can have their moment under the spotlight and be the heroes.
The main antagonist is weak and poorly written. The moral of the story is reused, the "new themes" unexplored and thus uninteresting. -
Tale follows how naive pair grow up, gain friends, lose innocence. Not my cuppa. Maybe better for greenies, idealists, kids? I dislike feeling lectured to.
Living planet Petaybee responds to treatment, good and bad, talks to those born on her. Girl Murel and boy Ronan have hair in red-brown curls and black straight (p 130), not silver straight and white waves as on the book cover. Like dad, they change into seals when immersed in water, pursued for experiments by bad scientist. Their pal Keola wants a Hawaii-like volcano home for his people, gives authors more research output. -
I really enjoyed this book in the beginning. The characters and world it's set on are quite intriguing. It just seemed to lose momentum the last half and the ending was a bit anticlimactic to me but I can see how it's to set it up for more books in the series.
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I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this series earlier since I enjoyed reading Anne McCaffrey books including those she wrote with Elizabeth Scarborough for many years.
In this one the main characters are living on a terraformed planet that is cold most of the year. This story emphasizes one family. The father can change into a Selkie, a seal, as can his twin children, a boy and girl. The twins can also communicate with other animals telepathically when they are in seal form.
Unscrupulous scientists want to capture and experiment on animals including the twins if they can catch them. To try to move the twins to safety as they are too reckless, they are sent off planet to learn more about to relate to more humans, not realizing they could be placing them in danger.
This is a well crafted plot. I enjoyed listening to the audiobook. -
I really enjoyed these characters and the sentient planet of Petaybee. I will definitely read the entire trio of stories.
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The idea of the planet giving birth and of the people having to coax her through it was interesting. I like otters. I enjoyed the story. *thumbs up*
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I'm a fan
Loved the book but would like a little more from the male viewpoint. Can't wait to see what Ke'ole gets up to. -
Slightly more YA formula driven than I expected-- still a good series, but not as good as dragonriders
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I have not read a booking in this series for many years, but remember enjoying the previous books. This is no exception-makes me wish our planet could participate in its own upkeep.
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shape-shifting twins Ronan and Murel
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Too obvious it was co authored.
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Love this audio book!
