The Messengers
It’s a postcard, the picture so detailed it seems real and upon future investigation it becomes real, the picture coming to life right before her very eyes. Imagine holding a detailed, hand-painted postcard in your hand, now imagine a day or two later that imagine coming to life right before your very eyes, take that image one step further and inside that detailed image a death has taken place. That is the world of the Messengers. Frances is a Messenger, not a fully-developed one yet as she still needs help controlling her talents and that is where Peter fits in. Along the sea, in a beach hut with a magnifying glass over his eye, she spots Peter, an older teen who seems to know more about her than someone should know just by the few minutes that they have spent talking together. After asking her to deliver a postcard on her way home, Frances kindly complies but it is the next day while walking back to meet him that alarms Frances. This postcard, which she examined before delivering, is now materializes before her eyes. The scene is all too familiar, the horror traumatizing, and now she’s racing off to find Peter for she needs an explanation for what she has just experienced. I was on the seat of my pants thinking what was in store for Frances; how exciting yet unsettling this new world she was about to discover. She had no idea that the strange illustrations that flew from her hand after her blackouts were someone’s future, their destiny laid out on a slip of paper. Such power they both possessed but Frances wanted to change all that. Can they change what is destiny and what would be the consequences if they could? Sometimes it’s better to leave things as they are but Frances is determined to do something, it’s just her nature.
The imagery of the postcards was superb, it reminded me of the opening of a movie where they show the scene and then the movie starts and the characters and the picture start to move based on that beginning scene. The Messengers don’t know what they are drawing as it occurs after they have experienced a blackout and they aren’t conscious of their surroundings. They even need to use magnifying glasses to look at all the details in their pictures to fully understand them. There were other events occurring in the novel but the images were the most important and rightly deserved center stage. I really enjoyed the concept of the novel and I thought it was an entertaining read.
