Zeustian Logic
Sabrina Malcolm
Gecko Press
Pub. 2017

 

November 16, 2021

Imagine having a famous dad who loves climbing, but then finding out that he has been lost up a mountain. Imagine if it was also on the news about how he left behind a fellow climber. Zeustian Logic is a heart-warming book that Sabrina Malcolm has written well. This is her very first book!

Duncan has to know the truth about his father and the climbing disaster. So he sneaks out at midnight to see Mike, someone that his dad had climbed with and who was on the same expedition. Mike is surprised to see Duncan standing at his doorstep. Mike tells him what he knows, and Duncan is devastated. He makes it home before his mum wakes up.

Reporters keep coming to Duncan’s family home and wanting answers about his Dad’s climbing disaster. Duncan has had enough. He runs after the reporter after mum turns him away at the door. He explodes with everything that happened. But then he finds out later that what he has done is going to be a huge mistake.

The language in this book is interesting as it’s got some unusual ways to describe things. I think that if reading this book makes you understand language in a different way. You have to think about what the author means as it doesn’t really explain everything in a simple way.

I think Zeustian Logic is a particularly sad story. I think that it would have paid off to make some things a bit more dramatic compared to the tone that the book it written in.

Do you remember how I mentioned before that Duncan would later regret what he had told the reporter? Well, he definitely did. He got home from school one day to find a newspaper in the mailbox with his dad’s picture, and everything he had told the reporter had been twisted into lies.

I would recommend this book for 11-12 year olds. This is because it is a book with an interesting plot that I think that you would have to be a little older to understand. Overall I think Zeustian Logic is a great book and is set out well.

– Lucy Pratley is 12 and lives in Christchurch.