Stone Voice Rising Book Review

Stone Voice Rising
By C. Lee Tocci
Harcourt
2009

Dedication: This book is dedicated to the memory of Miss Judy Wiggin, my fourth and fifth grade teacher, who taught me the magic of words.

Target Age Group: Boys or girls, ages 9 though 12

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Synopsis

Lilibit is a six-year old with a special gift – she can hear the stones talking. As young as she is, she must go to Kiva for the proper training to fulfill her destiny. Instead, she’s kidnapped.

Five years later, she’s a broken little girl who arrives at a foster home near where she grew up. Her kidnappers are frantic. They want her back and will stop at nothing – not even murder – to retrieve their “property.” Lilibit doesn’t remember who she is, she doesn’t speak, can barely walk, but the one thing she knows is that she needs to go to Kiva.

The foster home has 6 other residents, all orphaned or abandoned by their parents with nothing to lose. All they have is each other, and now Lilibit. They join her in the quest to find Kiva. With the kidnappers searching for them, and a mysterious stone warrior tracking them, will they make it safely?

Book Review

I had very mixed feelings about this book. The beginning was a bit disjointed with short, unrelated chapters that left me trying to figure out what was going on. But once the threads were brought together in the section that began five years later, there were parts of it that kept me glued to my seat.

But as the book wore on, I began to grow weary. Each chapter became travel to one town, nearly get captured, escape. Go to the next town, nearly get captured, escape. It became very routine and didn’t push the plot or the characters forward. And by the ending, there were so many unanswered questions that it felt like that, rather than being a complete story in itself, this story had become the foundation for a series of books to follow, with big arrows that said, “Look at me, I’m a thread that will become another book.”

I will say that I appear to be alone in this opinion. Most other reviews I read of this book were glowing and wonderful. But for me, the second half of the book, and particularly the ending, was an extremely disappointing conclusion to the promise the first half of the book showed.

Amazon Links

Stone Voice Rising - Hardcover

Characters

Lilibit – 6 years old when the story starts, 11 when she arrives at the foster home. She’s precocious as a 6 year old, a trait that gets her in a lot trouble.

Keotak-se – 10 centuries old, he is the last of the True Stone Warriors.
Lilibit calls him Mr. Tree because of his stature and general appearance. It is his job to take Lilibit to Kiva.

Todd – 8 when he arrives at the foster home, 13 when we encounter him 5 years later. He’s now the oldest at the foster home, and therefore the acknowledged leader of the other 5 residents. But he still doesn’t understand why his father left him and never came back.

Nita, Marla, Donny, Jeff and Devon – The 5 other children with Todd at the foster home. Donny and Marla are 12, Jeff is 11, and Nita and Devon are 8. And they are all very, very special.

Syxx -- The Operations Chief of the Nil and Voight Medical Research Institute (NAVMRI). Since taking over at NAVRMI, the Institute has landed every grant and contract they’ve gone after. But what does that have to do with Lilibit?