Book Review: The Daykeeper's Grimoire by Christy Raedeke

The Daykeeper's Grimoire (Prophecy of Days #1)

Christy Raedeke

Publication Date: May 8th 2010

Publisher: Flux

Pages: 352

Genre: Mystery, Adventure, Young Adult

Can one (super smart) girl
(who just wants to be discovered)
decipher the cryptic Mayan calendar prophecy and SAVE THE WORLD? 

When her safe-cracker mom and code-breaker dad inherit a dreary Scottish castle, sixteen-year-old Caity Mac Fireland is not happy. Ripped from her cushy life and friends in San Francisco, Caity’s secret fantasy of being discovered by a Hollywood agent, talent scout, or even just a pageant coach seems more unlikely than ever.

But when Caity stumbles across a hidden room in the castle, its walls covered in strange symbols, her life takes a bizarre turn. She finds herself center stage in an international conspiracy involving warring secret societies, assassins, the suppressed revelations of the Mayan Calendar and the year 2012, plus the fate of humanity.

With the help of her friend Justine back home, and Alex, a gorgeous and mysterious Scottish boy, Caity must race to decipher the code and reveal its message to the world before time runs out.

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.

I'm not as passionate about the "twists" in this book as I have been in the past. I completely guess Donald would end up going with them to Easter Island, and even though I was surprised about Dr. Li, I have a hard time believing he was really betraying them, and I'd rather think that he is solving some other mystery.

The meeting with all the kids was absolutely awesome, and I only wish that it pulled off more belieavable as well. It was just too easy for Caity and Janine to get to the places they needed to get.

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.

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