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Cover of THE ARCHITECT'S EPIPHANY
2.80

Based on 5 Goodreads ratings

THE ARCHITECT'S EPIPHANY

by the dastardly Zhehe people, but that just means that the stage is set for a City Builder—in this case the young Ocean Hacklin, heir to the great City Builder Yishan Hacklin—to rebuild Aye\u002DShan City all over again, using his superhuman Naoyang skills. Before that can happen, however, Ocean must team up with Shaman Ling Tiber\u003B together, the duo, along with a comical company of other Aye\u002DShan City refugees, set out to locate the fabled Guardian Beast. Readers may see parallels between Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series and the story of the fallen city of Aye\u002DShan: Both set technology and the natural world at odds with each other. The Kwong brothers take the premise one step further in positing that war itself is just part of the natural cycle of things. There is a lyrical quality in both the writing (“The fighting song is loud and clear, the sound of nature changes the world”) and the illustrations. The latter seem to shift and morph into varying styles, some vibrant and colorful, others stark and black \u0026amp\u003B white. At one point, speaking through imaginative speech balloons in prose that gives it an ethereal air of nobility, the mighty Guardian Beast laments how it was overcome after the Zhehe people “tempted Aye\u002DShan people to engage in lewd acts, which generated negative energy and weakened my power.” Will the Zhehe people and the inhabitants of Aye\u002DShan City ever break free of this cycle of destruction and creation? That depends on what the Kwong brothers next have in store for readers."

Book Details

Publisher:Of
Published:2024-01-01
Pages:272
Format:paperback
Language:English
ISBN:9781545819

Reading Info

Age Range:12-18

About This Book

This architectural adventure follows a young designer's journey through a world of impossible structures and gravity-defying forms, where buildings come alive with personality and purpose. The narrat...

Our Review

This architectural adventure follows a young designer's journey through a world of impossible structures and gravity-defying forms, where buildings come alive with personality and purpose. The narrative cleverly weaves principles of design thinking with imaginative world-building, creating a story that feels both fantastical and grounded in real architectural concepts. Readers will marvel at the detailed descriptions of floating cities and transforming structures that challenge conventional thinking about space and form. The protagonist's creative struggle to solve design problems serves as an engaging metaphor for overcoming life's obstacles through innovation and persistence.

What makes this story particularly compelling is how it makes abstract design principles accessible through tangible, visual storytelling that young minds can grasp and apply to their own creative endeavors. The book successfully bridges the gap between artistic imagination and practical problem-solving, showing how creative vision can shape physical reality. Teen readers interested in design, engineering, or simply looking for stories about making ideas real will find this both inspiring and thought-provoking. The architectural epiphany at the heart of the story delivers a powerful message about the transformative potential of creative vision.

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