Wright's new fantasy is about five orphans, raised in a strict British boarding school, who discover they are not ordinary human beings. The students at the school do not age, while the world outside does. The teenagers begin to make sinister discoveries about themselves. Amelia is apparently a fourth dimensional being; Victor can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls where none had previously been; Colin is a psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power ...
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Wright's new fantasy is about five orphans, raised in a strict British boarding school, who discover they are not ordinary human beings. The students at the school do not age, while the world outside does. The teenagers begin to make sinister discoveries about themselves. Amelia is apparently a fourth dimensional being; Victor can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls where none had previously been; Colin is a psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power comes from a different paradigm or view of the inexplicable universe - and they should not be able to co-exist. The orphans have been kidnapped from their true parents, robbed of their powers and memories, and raised in ignorance by super-beings: pagan gods or fairy-queens, Cyclops, sea-monsters, witches, or things even stranger than this. The children must experiment with, and learn to control, their strange abilities in order to escape their captors.
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Add this copy of Orphans of Chaos to cart. $6.53, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 2005 by Tor Books.
Add this copy of Orphans of Chaos to cart. $6.53, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2005 by Tor Books.
Add this copy of Orphans of Chaos to cart. $6.53, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2005 by Tor Books.
Add this copy of Orphans of Chaos to cart. $6.53, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2005 by Tor Books.
Add this copy of Orphans of Chaos to cart. $6.53, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2005 by Tor Books.
Add this copy of Orphans of Chaos (the Chronicles of Chaos) to cart. $6.54, very good condition, Sold by HPB Inc. rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2005 by Tor Books.
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Seller's Description:
Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Add this copy of Orphans of Chaos (the Chronicles of Chaos) to cart. $6.54, very good condition, Sold by Half Price Books Inc rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2005 by Tor Books.
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Seller's Description:
Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Add this copy of Orphans of Chaos to cart. $23.00, very good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 2005 by Tor Books.
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Seller's Description:
Very good. Dust jacket in good condition. First edition, first printing. SIGNED by the author. Minor shelf and handling wear, overall a clean solid copy with minimal signs of use. Secure packaging for safe delivery.
Add this copy of Orphans of Chaos (the Chronicles of Chaos) to cart. $30.00, very good condition, Sold by The Book Bin rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Salem, OR, UNITED STATES, published 2005 by Tor Books.
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Very Good in Fine jacket. 2005. 317 pages. First edition. Signed by John C. Wright on the title page, without inscription. Red boards with gold spine titling, bumped to spine foot, else fine. Spine square. Binding sound. Dust jacket fine in archival Mylar. Interior bright, free of marks.
Add this copy of Orphans of Chaos to cart. $33.68, very good condition, Sold by dying earth books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from torrance, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2005 by Tor Books.
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Near Fine in Fine jacket. Book. Signed by Author(s) 1st ed/1st printing, SIGNED by the author on the title page. This book is square, solid, and unread; the boards are solid and unblemished, and the lovely dust jacket is in a protective Brodart cover. No price clippings, no remainder marks. You'll feel as though you've been wandering over the hills and far away, beyond the fields we know, through faery lands forlorn, once you have this book in your hands! NOTE: Very light evidence of handling to the sides of the pages.
I read this for a book club so it was highly recommended by one of the members. At it's core Orphans of Chaos is a coming of age story except the children are not really children and the society/world is not really terrestrial. I was able to get through it because I like mythology but I am not interested enough to continue reading the series.
Orphans of Chaos is a fast read because the language is simple and there are no major uses of literacy devices (e.g., foreshadowing) that requires the reader to really pay attention to details. Unfortunately, this also contributes to an overall lack of excitement in the storytelling. There are actors and a lot of action but very little character development. A four-year-old child has more depth than the narrator, one of the female "orphans". The author may have had better results if he chose to tell the story from another perspective but there are ways in which a more sophisticated writer could've made even a reluctant first-person narrator more alive.
The most complex passages in the book are the mathematical and scientific explorations into 4th + dimensions and how one would perceive and think about those spaces. Sure it's interesting but it's a waste of the reader's time. That discussion could be another entire story. There are so many other interesting things that the author could have expanded on, at the expense of, that speculation. Most disappointing, for me, is that the mythology is not used for more than a convenient prop.
The single mythic aspect Wright consistently focuses on is sex: in a physical (e.g., lust, violence) and a cultural (e.g., gender roles, ageism) sense. The sexulization of the characters appeared gratuitous. Although Wright might have intended to use sex as metaphor, it is applied far too heavily and much too intensely, to add to the plot. Again the author takes an interesting idea and goes overboard with it. The sex may also be disturbing for many readers given the initial impression that these orphans are really children.
