Eleventh Plague Sparknotes

Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch Opinion
The Eleventh Plague is one of those books you MUST finish in 4 days or less because the story sticks like glue to your mind and you won’t stop theory-crafting until you give in and read it to the end these are reasons why. Eleventh Plague has a well-written plot which is essential to any story and it is back up by the fascinating character development and detailed writing. Eleventh Plague has a great plot. At the start, it shows Stephen and his Father trekking along an abandoned road when suddenly, they spot a Canadian military airplane. It then leads on to show the two of them living in the plane for a few days until a group of slavers also find this plane. Stephens father has a fight with the slavers

and Stephen with his father manage to get away.

Unfortunately, though, Stephan’s father receives a critical injury and falls into a coma. When Stephen is protecting his father, a group of scouts find him and then offer to bring him to their town and take care of him and his father. Stephen takes this offer and lives in this town called Settler’s Landing. The town’s leader hired so-called mercenaries for defense but they were actually the slavers that had attacked Stephan and his father and when they recognize Stephen, they attack the town. The juiciest part in the books is when the slavers are preparing for an assault on the town because it mentions the same 2 slavers Stephan saw on the plane and it brings you back to where it all started. The second reason why others should read Eleventh Plague is because of the extremely well-detailed writing that has the ability to consistently paint the perfect image of a person, place or thing in a reader’s mind. “The snow had stopped and the day had grown warmer, leaving slippery patches of ice snow and mud. As I drew closer to the slavers’ camp, I caught metallic clanking noises and snatches of voices, faint at first. Despite the cold, sweat was dripping off my forehead. When I slid dad’s knife from its

sheath, my palms were slick on the handle. A heavy thump shuddered through my chest”. This paragraph is one of many great examples in the book as it lays out the setting, atmosphere and the mood of the character extremely well. You may even catch yourself thinking of it as a scene from a movie on your spare time as it feels like an artist describing his painting to you personally. The third and final reason others should read Eleventh Plague is because of the great character development of Stephan. At the start of this story, Stephan was narrow-minded and followed all of his grandfather’s orders even if he thought it was wrong.

“He was trying to be calm, but I knew the hitch he got in his voice when he was scared. No announcement could possibly have been worse. One of Grandpa’s absolute, unbreakable rules was that if we saw other people, people we didn’t know, we were to avoid them at all costs. Other people meant trouble. Other people with a vehicle meant even more trouble”. This quotation shows that Stephan was following his grandfather’s guidance without even thinking about any other outcome on his own, making him an underdeveloped, uninteresting character. “This is how we got here in the first place, Grandpa would have said, sneering at the books. But then there was Dad’s voice, whispering to me that night in the plane as we watched a doomed woman and boy. Grandpa was gone.” This quotation later in the book shows that Stephan still thinks of what his grandfather would tell him, however, he makes his own decisions and judgments which perceive Stephan as a confident and different person than who he was at the start of the story. Character development is one of the most important aspects of a first person point of view book and Eleventh Plague accomplishes it very well through thorough description

and the large emphasis on past experiences. The great plot, descriptive writing, and character development are the reasons other students should read Eleventh Plague and it’s not something distressing to read since it is an astonishing book that will stick with you until somehow you find something even better than Eleventh Plague.