Sky Raiders (series Five Kingdoms)

Mull, Brandon.  Sky Raiders (series Five Kingdoms).  Simon & Schuster/ Aladdin  2014  421p  $16.99    ISBN 978-1-4424-9700-9  elem/ms     Fantasy  VG-BN         

Our young protagonist, Cole Randolph, is trick-or-treating with friends when things begin to unravel while they are “visiting” a haunted house. The kids learn that monsters are real when they are kidnapped and taken underneath the house and into another world as slaves.  Cole follows the others to try to rescue them, but is himself captured and sold to the Sky Raiders, who live on the edge of the Five Kingdoms and scavenge from castles floating on clouds.  This fantastical adventure grabbed this reader from the get-go, and the action/adventure roller coaster of a story made it difficult to put down.  Cole is an interesting character, and the author has done an excellent job in creating a new, fantastical realm to explore.  This is the first of a series, so while the ending is rather abrupt, the story will hopefully pick up quickly again in the next book.

Summary: While chasing after his friends under a haunted house, young Cole finds himself in the Five Kingdoms, a place that exists somewhere between the realities of this world and those of another, kind of between life and death or between awareness and dreaming.      

Adventure-Fiction                                           --Lynn Fisher

Mull, Brandon A World without Heroes (Beyonders)

Mull, Brandon A World without Heroes (Beyonders)
Aladdin see Simon Schuster 2011 464p 19.99
978-1-4169-9792-4 ms/hs E-BN


Jason enters another world where he must procure 7 syllables of a word created to bring on the demise of Maldor, the ruthless emperor of Lyrian. The book is about his journey to find each syllable & the wonderful characters he meets along the way.
After entering another world through the mouth of a hippo, Jason rises to see the Giddy Nine sailing downriver to a suicidal death. With a beginning like this, Brandon Mull begins the first of his new series, “Beyonders.” The reader will become so enthralled with the characters, plot, unique descriptions, advanced vocabulary that he/she will go right out to buy the next installment and then the next in order to have all questions answered! This book is excellent. The plot moves forward with Jason trying to help the Giddy Nine, in vain, and ending up at the lore master’s depository of books of the land. It is there that he hears about his new task, to bring down Maldor by finding the syllables of a word that once stated in Maldor’s presence will destroy him. The characters are divine. In one episode, Jason’s adversary is the immense crab which is a believable threat in any world. The Tavern-Go-Round is uniquely creative. The plight of each character is engaging, and readers will love the scene when Jason and fellow beyonder, Rachel, eat puckerly. What child wouldn’t love scenes in which characters must eat something so unthinkably disgusting as a raw squirming fish? There is a displacer, a creature who can split his body into parts that function individually. Mull’s fantastic use of imagery is creepy, humorous and entertaining, all at the same time! Jason and Rachel fight all kinds of creatures: conscriptors, wizard’s spies, assassins, a quicksand lake and a castle of such earthly delights that people who go there don’t want to leave! Mull gives a new twist to so many old ideas such as reincarnation; characters called People of the Seed are reincarnated, but maintain their memories! In the end, Jason amasses all of the syllables necessary to bring down Maldor, only to learn that the word was a ruse created for the entertainment of the emperor. Jason ends up imprisoned, rescued by Ferrin, one of Maldor’s spies, and is sent on his way back to the Beyond. However, with Maldor still reigning and with Rachel missing, Jason’s job is not done. He is a true hero, and the reader suspects that in Book Two, Jason will indeed return to Lyrian to continue his quest. Fans as well as non-fans of fantasy will love this!
Note the spacing error at the bottom of page 174! There are other errors as well in the proof.Squaresky, Martha