Echo McCool - Review by Botticelli

Bought this for my neice, and she loves it. I read it as well, and for a YA book, I was delighted and carried way by this wonderful story. I recommend this to parents, and their children as a really cool wonderful read.

Botticelli Review

Echo McCool - Review by Fantasy 3

What an amazing book!An easy 5*!!! Adult or child, you'd love Echo McCool!!! The main characters are Echo and Jason, who I fell in love with, once I picked this book up I did not want to put it down!!! The writing is a very high standard, I loved the descriptions, I would love to have been there with them both (saving the day). The author is a very talented writer, and I can't wait for the next instalments or any books he writes in the future.

Fantasy 3's Review

Echo McCool - Tom D Harris Review

Son to a missing father, son to a murdered mother, brother to a kidnapped sister, Jason Fleeting will have his vengeance in this life...not the next.

When twelve year old Jason falls out of a tree and into a coma in the grounds of the children's home where he lives, he finds himself on a beach at the edge of time; somewhere between the living and the afterlife.
Here, he meets a beautiful dryad, Fenella, who recites a tale of ancient conflicts, war, bravery and death. She also reveals that Jason and his sister, Lauren, are descendants of a human-dryad and tasks Jason to return to earth to save her daughter, Echo McCool. In turn Echo will help Jason to rescue his sister from her kidnappers.

With Echo rescued from Witch Wood, she uses the dryad gift of Gewita to look into the past to unravel the mysteries of Jason's past and his sister's kidnapping. Together they delve deeper and deeper into the sinister secrets of the Cobalt family and the eerie Ravenstone Manor.

With the help of a (rock) band of minstrels, as echoes of a female Robin Hood resonate through the pages, they encounter dodgy coppers, arson attacks, collapsing tunnels and other endless confrontations, but don't panic - Echo knows Kung Fu.

A pacey, page turner from Roger K Driscoll, packed with great characters and a great sense of fun. This action adventure flirts with crime and mystery as fantasy smashes headlong into reality.

Echo and Jason may not be able to predict their futures in the Gewita but in the words of a popular indie-rock band.

I predict a sequel...I predict a sequel...

Echo McCool - Tom D Harris Review

Echo McCool - Imperatrix Review

I bought this for my 10 year old but because she loved it and kept going on about it I decided to have a read as well. Echo is half-blood Dryad girl who gets shot by this poison arrow in the dark ages and escapes by hiding in this hollow tree, but she doesnt realize that shell get stuck there and the poison will put her to sleep for something like 800 years. In the present a 12 year old boy called Jason is in this coma and having a near death experience where he meets Echos mother who says shell heal him and tell him how to find his kidnapped sister Lauren if he rescues Echo before lumberjacks cut her in half. He agrees and awakens Echo and they go off together to rescue his sister and restore an inheritance to a new friend. Overall this has good characters, its very readable and fast with loads of action and tension. Were both looking forward to the sequel already.

Echo McCool - Imperatrix Review

Echo McCool - S O'Neill Review

Many authors have attempted to do what Mr Driscoll does with Echo McCool, but few have succeeded. It's a very traditional story but at the same time new. It feels like a timeless classic has been updated to appeal to kids today. I was watching Sherlock Holmes on BBC One the other day and it put me in mind of how the makers of that show have updated an old idea to make it appeal to viewers today. Mr Driscoll has done the same here with children's fiction.


The stars, Jason and Echo, complement each other very well. Mr Driscoll does not give in to temptation and just have Jason 'do a Pygmalion' on Echo - instead he has them learn from and help each other. Yes, Jason is resourceful and has modern knowledge, but Echo is uniquely skilled, sharp not to mention self-sufficient. "I know not ring the police" she says, but I think she is not just saying she does not know who the police are - I think she is intelligent enough to work that one out for herself - instead she is saying "I would not ever use the police." Echo's strength is reflected in other ways too: e.g. Jason derides Echo's medieval language and tries to teach her how people speak today ("All this perchance and thou art stuff - no one speaks like that any more. It's better to say perhaps and you are.") Echo then explains to him how "thee" differs from "you" and how modern language is actually a dumbed down version of what she speaks - it's less specific. I found this a joy to read as when I have read books like this before, the authors have tended to make the person from the past seem stupid when in fact they are just not educated about modern things. In many ways though they are cleverer.


I also like how Mr Driscoll combines Lord of the Rings-style mythology with modern day action. Going from a dryad netherworld to a couple of working class blokes cutting down a tree really underlines the differences between the main characters' worlds, and he makes each character seem believable.


The story ends on a high note and the promise of more adventures to come, and I am looking forward to reading more about Echo and Jason and their journey together. 

Book Launch - "The Tally" by E G Wolverson

I’ve been keeping an eye on the pre-publicity for E.G. (“Eddy”) Wolverson’s novel “The Tally” for a specific reason. Eddy hails from Hull, just a few miles up the road from me, and I thought the least I could do was to mention The Tally on its launch day. So without further ado here is the product description; I hope it grabs your attention as much as it did mine:

"Welcome to the Student Bubble.


Welcome to a world where DJs play the same songs in the same order every single night, and the one (and only) hit wonder reigns supreme. Welcome to a world of crude cartoon and misplaced melodrama, a word free of all but the most trifling of consequences, where exaggerated sensitivity is rife and a semester's success or suicide hangs on the whim of a woman.


Young Tom-o wiles away his evenings in a purple drunken stupor, lost to the tender mercies of what he desperately wishes was a hopeless love affair, but in reality isn't even that. Gristle, meanwhile, is enraged when his weak-bladdered housemate Spadge moves out, only to be replaced by a neurotic freak named Jamal, who dares not only to bring books into his house, but to read them too.


And for poor Will, matters are even worse. Women are staying in of a night! How's he supposed to rack up his 'tally' of conquests if women daren't leave their digs? They're all terrified that they'll be next to fall prey to the invisible menace that has started stealing students away from the streets of Hull. Will has nothing to fear though - after all, he has his recently-arrived destitute father to watch his back. And the fearsome Gristle. And the zealously neurotic Jamal. And the dangerously depressed Tom...


The Student Bubble is about to burst, and when it does, the degenerated residents of 146 Worthington Street will find themselves in a reality that they're not equipped to comprehend, let alone survive in." 


You can give Eddy the recognition he deserves by purchasing and reviewing The Tally in the Kindle Store. Here's the Amazon.co.uk link. Best of luck, Eddy! 
The Tally - Amazon UK Link

Echo McCool - "An Engaging Fantasy Novel" - Billy Askew Review

This book starts with an enticing opening sentence: "She heard the twang of a bowstring beyond the glade." The story that follows is both original and charming. Echo McCool is a karate-kicking half-dryad girl from medieval times. After narrowly escaping death by hiding inside a hollow tree she awakes in the present day and befriends 12-year-old Jason Fleeting. With Echo's help, Jason goes off in search of his missing sister.

Both Echo and Jason are endearing characters who show tremendous resourcefulness and courage. This is an empowering message to young readers and the book is a pleasure to read. Recommended for readers aged 8-13.

Dryads in Fiction

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryad
Dryads are mentioned in Milton’s Paradise Lost, in Coleridge, and in Thackeray’s work The Virginians.^[12] Keats addresses the nightingale as ‘light-winged Dryad of the trees’, in his Ode to a Nightingale. In the poetry of Donald Davidson they illustrate the themes of tradition and the importance of the past to the present.^[13] The poet Sylvia Plath uses them to symbolize nature in her poetry in “On the Difficulty of Conjuring up a Dryad”, and “On the Plethora of Dryads”.^[14]
In the ballet Don Quixote Dryads appear in a vision with Dulcinea before Don Quixote, they also appear in the classical ballet Sylvia
Dryads are also featured extensively throughout The Chronicles of Narnia by British author C.S. Lewis and are shown to fight along side Aslan, son of the Emperor-Over-The-Sea, and the Pevensie Children.
The same characters recur in David Eddings’ The Belgariad, where Dryads live in seclusion on the Wood of the Dryads within the Tolnedran Empire and among the most prominent in the storyline is Ce’Nedra.
In the animated show Monster School, the character Rose Greendae is a dryad who can turn into a tree at will.
In the series Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan, there is a dryad named Juniper who is the girlfriend of Grover Underwood.
____________
Other dryads in fiction:
Sue Maynard – Ebon Black and the Seven Dryads
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ebon-Black-Seven-Dryads-ebook/dp/B005HSPMUS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319464657&sr=8-1
Frank Stockton – The Lost Dryad
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lost-Dryad-Stockton-Frank-Richard/dp/1110970137/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1319464733&sr=8-7
The Dryad Project – James Moy
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dryad-Project-James-D-Moy/dp/1843866900/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319464820&sr=1-1
The Dryad by Justin Huntly McCarthy
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dryad-Novel-Justin-Huntly-McCarthy/dp/1103049151/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319464820&sr=1-3
The Oracle of the Missing Dryad – Kristin Groulx
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oracle-Missing-Dryad-Kristin-Groulx/dp/0981131522/ref=sr_1_56?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319465055&sr=1-56
Mr Griffin and the Dryad – Frank Stockton
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Griffin-Minor-Canon-Pipes-Dryad/dp/1425468659/ref=sr_1_100?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319465215&sr=1-100