"Alien invasions and rocking-horse-flies are fine, but this you faint at?"
For the heroes of James Riley's Story Thieves, fiction is nothing to mess around with. When Owen sees his classmate, Bethany, climb out of a library book, his once-boring world is turned upside-down. No longer is he confined to reading his favorite stories; now he can live them. Everything changes, though, when he saves the wise mentor in the most popular fantasy tale the world has ever seen. Before he knows it, the Magister has escaped the confines of the story, Bethany is off having adventures with Kiel Gnomenfoot--only the coolest teen wizard in the history of awesome--and Owen...well, Owen is in the yet-to-be-released final installment, pretending to be Kiel until the real Kiel can take his place. The problem? The Magister isn't the hero everyone thinks he is, and if Owen and Bethany don't act quickly, their world is about to have a very unhappy ending.
Travelling through stories is every reader's dream. Owen certainly thinks so, anyway. In fact, his greatest dream is to go on an adventure far from the oh-so-boring world that is real life. His impulsiveness and unapologetic fanboy attitude belie his intelligence, making him do things he knows are stupid even before he begins. While it's a little annoying, it makes him human, speaking to that part of the reader which knows, deep down, they would do the same thing. Bethany, on the other hand, is a thoughtful girl who makes rational choices. After a lifetime of jumping from page to page, she knows better than to interfere with a story. She's spent years looking for her father, a fictional character, in every tale she can find. It's a lonely business, and the development of her heart and personality as a result of Owen's friendship makes all his mistakes worthwhile.
For all our wild imaginings of meeting our favorite heroes and villains, we rarely stop to think about their reactions to finding out that they aren't real. When the Magister breaks into our world, he is horrified to learn that his entire existence has been controlled by an author's imagination. Immediately abandoning the war he's waged for years against the evil Dr. Verity, he sets forth to change the laws which govern our world. He has powerful resources at hand, and wields them well--everything from dragons to tooth-goblins and a big, scary giant stand between Bethany, Kiel, and the world's safety. Some of it is silly, some intimidating; all of it ushers the plot along at a fast clip, keeping the stakes, personal and general alike, at just the right height.
This is a very kid-friendly adventure. Violence is cartoonish, vocabularies are clean, and while a couple of important figures share a spark with another character, any romance that develops will take place in one of the sequels. The Kiel Gnomenfoot series concerns a teenaged wizard who must battle an evil mastermind from a planet where everything is controlled by science, and is filled with zombies, cyborgs, ray guns, and robot "Science Soldiers". Even the system of magic is wacky. The heroes are smart, creative middle-schoolers who are sure to charm readers almost immediately.
I would recommend this book to kids, adults, and everyone in between who longs to experience the kind of adventure only found in fiction. Owen and Bethany are fun to follow as they embark on their journey to save the world. The threat is unique, the writing imaginative, and the stakes realistic. What flaws it has are minor; James Riley did a wonderful job with this one. For action, magic, and plenty of excitement, Story Thieves deserves five stars.
For all our wild imaginings of meeting our favorite heroes and villains, we rarely stop to think about their reactions to finding out that they aren't real. When the Magister breaks into our world, he is horrified to learn that his entire existence has been controlled by an author's imagination. Immediately abandoning the war he's waged for years against the evil Dr. Verity, he sets forth to change the laws which govern our world. He has powerful resources at hand, and wields them well--everything from dragons to tooth-goblins and a big, scary giant stand between Bethany, Kiel, and the world's safety. Some of it is silly, some intimidating; all of it ushers the plot along at a fast clip, keeping the stakes, personal and general alike, at just the right height.
This is a very kid-friendly adventure. Violence is cartoonish, vocabularies are clean, and while a couple of important figures share a spark with another character, any romance that develops will take place in one of the sequels. The Kiel Gnomenfoot series concerns a teenaged wizard who must battle an evil mastermind from a planet where everything is controlled by science, and is filled with zombies, cyborgs, ray guns, and robot "Science Soldiers". Even the system of magic is wacky. The heroes are smart, creative middle-schoolers who are sure to charm readers almost immediately.
I would recommend this book to kids, adults, and everyone in between who longs to experience the kind of adventure only found in fiction. Owen and Bethany are fun to follow as they embark on their journey to save the world. The threat is unique, the writing imaginative, and the stakes realistic. What flaws it has are minor; James Riley did a wonderful job with this one. For action, magic, and plenty of excitement, Story Thieves deserves five stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment