Knudsen, Michelle. The Mage of Trelian.

Knudsen, Michelle.  The Mage of Trelian.  Candlewick Press  2016  425p  $17.99  ISBN 978-0-7636-7136-6  ms/jr  Fantasy  VG-BN   

The third installment of the Trelian series, The Mage of Trelian, finds apprentice mage Calen desperate to escape Krelig, the evil and powerful mage determined to destroy the Magistatum and rule the world.  Krelig plans to strip Calen of his untapped magical power, but is training him first, in order to unlock Calen’s full potential.

Meanwhile, Trelian is at war and Princess Meg is fighting invading forces with her dragon.  She refuses to believe Calen is a traitor, but she is alone in her opinion.  Calen must return to Meg before it is too late to restore his good name and Meg’s eroding trust.

While the ending of this final volume is ambiguous and, as a result, unsatisfying, fans of the Trelian books will agree that Knudsen leaves her readers in a better place than the cliffhanger ending of volume two, and the very long gap readers endured in the interim between the two volumes.  The text is engaging and the action-packed plot propels the reader along to the last page. Great world-building and well-drawn characters round out an appealing addition to a well-written series.
     

Summary: The final installment of the Trelian series finds apprentice mage Calen being held captive to the evil Krelig while Princess Meg and her dragon engage in battles to defend her kingdom.

Warfare-Fiction, Adventure-Fiction                    --Hilary Welliver

Reeve, Philip. Scrivener’s Moon.

Reeve, Philip.    Scrivener’s Moon.   Scholastic Press  2011  339p  $17.99    978-0-545-22218-1 ms/hs   Science Fiction        E-BN 

In this sequel to Fever Crumb and A Web of Air, Fever Crumb returns to London, but it is very different from what she remembers.  Old buildings are being torn down to make way for the enormous mobile London that is being built with the steel and lumber from the old.  These are post-apocalyptic times, when only the Engineers at least partially understand technology like electricity.  It is about one thousand years after the “Screen Age” (i.e., the age of computers), and very little is understood about that ancient technology.

Wavey, Fever’s Scriven mother, hears about a possible source of knowledge and answers.  Wavey and Fever travel north to find the black pyramid.  They are ambushed and Wavey is killed.  Fever barely escapes and is rescued/captured by Cluny, who is a prophet for one of the Northern Clans.  Cluny, her brother and Fever decide to travel on to the pyramid.  There they find ancient technology that even Fever with her engineer training doesn’t fully understand.  She does learn that Cluny’s visions come from the same source as the ones that have haunted Fever -- an implant placed in her brain when she was an infant.  Together they become involved in the war between London and the Northern Clans.  Both young women survive and escape, and in the epilogue they are starting a new community in the Far North.
The descriptions are vivid, the action well-written, and the major characters well-developed.  A reader who starts with this third title will understand it, but the experience will be fuller for those familiar with the previous titles. Without the two previous books, the names and references to the Ancients and technomasters will take some time to understand.  For middle or high school readers.           

Warfare – Fiction, Fantasy – Fiction                             --Joan Theal