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The Island Tribe

by Charlotte Prentiss

Reviewed by Coral


Kori and her tribe live on an island beset by earthquakes, under the shadow of a volcano that always seems to be spewing fire. Her tribe believes that the Old Ones are angry with them and they do everything they can to appease their gods.

Kori, though, can't share their belief. She can't understand why it is always the young, the old and the weak who have to suffer and why the Old Ones punish her people so often. Despite the fact that she's the daughter of the tribe's leader, her odd views and outspokenness leave Kori feeling like an outsider. 

After one too many displays of her difference, Kori is exiled from her tribe's island to the Western Shore; land supposedly sacred to the Old Ones. Though her people have occasionally traveled to the Western Shore to collect sacred rocks with which to build their houses, it is only with the Old Ones permission. They cannot hunt there; they cannot stray too far inland.

Now, for thirty days, Kori will be alone on the Western Shore. Kori doesn't know how to hunt, nor does she have very much in the way of survival skills, but if she can find the strength and the resourcefulness, she can do more than just survive, she could find the secrets of the Western Shore and, maybe, find a way to save her people from themselves.

This wasn't a great book, but it wasn't a terrible one either. It was actually pretty enjoyable until the end of the book, where I just wanted more. There were plot twists and other things that I kept waiting to happen, but none of them did, so that instead of shocking or interesting, the ending was just boring.

Grade: C