[.ca] The Hound of Rowan: Book One of The Tapestry (ISBN 0375838945)

Courtesy of Teens Read Too:
Max McDaniels always spends one day a year at the Art Institute. This year, from the moment he enters, something strange happens. He finds himself in a roped-off room staring at a strange tapestry. Soon weird and wonderful things begin to happen to him as Max finds out about a magical school called Rowan Academy. Before long, his awe fades away into concern as he finds out that attending this school might be harder than he thought. To top it off, kids who are also meant to attend the school are disappearing from all over the world at an alarming rate. A new sense of peril erupts around Rowan Academy and Max finds himself pulled into a world of secrets and danger.... In THE HOUND OF ROWAN, Henry Neff elegantly weaves a story full of adventure and fantasy and pulls readers into a magical, startling world. All in all, this is a good book to just curl up with on the couch and relax. The reader will almost immediately find themselves enraptured and completely caught up in Max's world. Reviewed by: Voracious Reader

A Good Start, but here's hoping its destination is better...:
This being the first book in this series, and very recently released, I wanted to read it. Now, unfortunately you can draw more than a few parallels to the Harry Potter series in this book. Private school for gifted youths. quirky professors, animal familiars, and even a sport unique to the school called Euclidean Soccer (ala Quidditch in HP) at which our protagonist Max McDaniels, can excel due to his ability to Amplify his abilities (ala Harry being awesome on a broom to be a Seeker in HP), and even a character who you believe to be bad but is good (ala Sirius Black). I DID find myself drawing all these comparisons, and it would have been nice if Mr. Neff could have distanced himself from Rowlings' series a little more, because quite honestly, while this book is well written, it falls a bit shy of the writing in those books that made them so unbelievably readable. Another little homage to another idea is that of the Course in the books, which are scenario based rooms that can challenge you in many ways physically and strategically...and some of us know that this sounds decidedly similar to The Danger Room in the X-Men series. I doubt this similarity is intentional, but it is there for those of us that are old enough to know the X-Men. Moving on, this book DOES have some GREAT original stuff that makes it QUITE readable! The added history involved here is great. The Irish folktale stuff is nice and fresh. The Charges that the students have to look after (the above mentioned familiars) are quite unique in their design for the most part. The main glut of characters are engrossing for the most part. Max, Connor, David, Lucia, Cynthia, Julie et al, are quite well fashioned......but part of me wonders if Mr. Neff attempted to tell too much in this first book. He gives us tidbits about daily school life, and bits about budding relationships, but those threads start but never come to fruition, as he has moved on to some major event concerning the bad guys (called simply The Enemy). I realize these are going to be long character arcs that last over the series of books, but we needed more closure on a few at the end. Two things I wholeheartedly disliked: The character of Alex is flat and it is easy to pick out what will happen to him in the end early on, he's Draco Malfoy-ish without the charm really which is why he bothers me as an antagonist. The same can be said for Mr. Lukens, who I feel is simply a case of Deus Ex Machina and that there could have been a much easier and more believable way to have the faculty find the things out that they found out due to that revelation. So, it seems that this first book in the Tapestry series cuts a little....well a lot....too close to Harry Potter for my liking, and though I will most definitely read the second volume, I must say that if the series doesn't distinguish itself from said other YA fantasy series, then I will be hard pressed to move on to the 3rd volume. I feel that Mr. Neff has stumbled upon what CAN be a really interesting story, but he needs to know how to tell it in his own way that hasn't been done before. Not only to impress me, but the throngs of kids who would read it and see that it's too much like their beloved HP.