Mandragora Review Essay

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Mandragora Review
Readers of all ages will thoroughly enjoy this Australian novel. Mandragora has an invigorating choice of widespread vocabulary and an enchanting concept. Readers will laugh at the ingenious quips and the riveting storyline David McRobbie produces in this book.
Despite his naïve, somewhat irrational attitude, Adam Hardy and his intelligent crush Catriona Chisholm are left with the utmost responsibility of saving the town from four demonic dolls. As past and present collide, an evil force of nature returns, more malevolent than ever before.
Mandragora is set in the Australian town of Dunarling, a civilization built around and named after a tragic shipwreck that occurred centuries earlier. The story is also simultaneously set …show more content…

He flawlessly intertwined past and present to create an edge of the seat thriller. The author’s use of historical evidence along with the unique supernatural twist was ingenious.
As every chapter is read, you will be more and more enveloped into the mysterious and complex plot. This Australian story relies on clear story telling on the authors part, so the reader can avoid being confused. This book fails in doing this at certain points, particularly in the middle of the story. As an example, when the book erratically switches between past and present, I struggled to retain information about what was happening in the town and what was happening on the ship. To be fair to the author, the switches through time did lead to a thrilling edge of the seat reading experience.
David McRobbie’s charismatic style of writing will likely resonate with adults and children alike. Teenagers will relate to the likable protagonist as well as the charming love interest. David McRobbie successfully pairs witty humour alongside a dark underlining plot. Though it’s fair to make the argument that the character arc for the protagonist was weak, I found he barely grew as a character. Although he was likable, Adam Hardy was more of the eyes of the reader and a narrator, rather than his own character. I noticed this especially when it came to the dream sequences and the convenient exposition he produced from the

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