Blog Tour: Tower of Parlen Min by Matt Xell

Title: Tower of Parlen Min (The Narrow Escapes of Ves Asirin #1)

Author: Matt Xell

Pages: 345

Reviewed by: Sabrina

Ves Asirin wins a trip to the Tower of Parlen Min. There, with 19 other children, he competes in the Sword Challenge; a series of puzzles and tasks, for $12 million. As fantastic and glorious as the tower seems to be, Ves finds that it keeps a dark and secret history that he has been connected to for over 150 years, a secret that will define his destiny ... if he can escape 'The shadow'.

My Thoughts

I wanted to take a break from the romance and drama of YA so I gave the Tower of Parlen a try. It went way beyond my expectations. I loved that a piece of the mystery came along bit by bit. The story is really deep and complex. Brilliantly thought out.

The first thing I felt for Ves was sympathy.Why? Because he was an orphan, he was often alone and he was bullied frequently. He also has a condition where his memory would reset and he would forget everything (which reminded me much of Forgotten actually). To top it off, he's only 11 years old. Despite his memory loss, he's a smart, brave, adventurous, crazy, talented kid. He uses a scrapbook for a memory. He has an amazing talent for art and fencing. He gets into trouble a lot because of his adventure streak so I'm not too sure about the smart part. I liked that he started to change from the experiences from the tower and became more open.

The second thing I felt for Ves was anger and disgust at his attitude (I didn't like all of the changes). I gritted my teeth together and forced myself to read through the parts where he acted like a major jerk. I seriously wanted to shake and scold him for his rotten attitude.

The last thing I felt for Ves was sympathy again. I shouldn't explain that because I would be spoiling. I will say that I was screaming, "NOOO! WHY?!? IT'S NOT FAIR!" and that earned a few stares from my family.

The main thing I didn't like was that the story got off track a bit at the middle and that I was given the names of ALL the children at the tower at the same time. I had to repeatedly go back to see who was who. Some characters weren't even that much important.