Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star
No. 2 in the Fablehaven series
by Brandon Mull
illustrated by Brandon Dorman
|
Shadow Mountain (Salt Lake City): 1 May 2007. Hardcover: 456 pages. ISBN-10: 1-59038-742-2 ISBN-13: 978-1590387429 Suggested retail price: $17.95 (US) Tags: brownies; demons; dungeons; fairies; Fantasy; good vs. evil; grandparents; imps; magic; monsters; potions; satyrs; traitors; Youth Tactical strength: [8/10] |
Compare prices on Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star by Brandon Mull at Book Cost
Kendra and Seth expect to spend their next summer vacation helping out at Fablehaven, a mystical preserve for magical creatures tended by the kids' grandparents. But problems for Kendra and Seth start even before their summer vacation begins. After receiving thousands of fairy kisses at the end of the first book, Kendra can now see magical creatures without having to drink a daily dose of magical milk. This comes in handy when a Kobold shows up as a new kid in her 8th grade homeroom class. Everyone else sees a handsome, well dressed boy, but Kendra sees through the disguise and can see the boy's black tongue and oozing pustules on his bald head. Rather too conveniently, and older, well-dress gentleman who calls himself Errol offers to help Kendra get rid of the Kobold. After Kendra quizzes Errol with a few questions, she comes to believe Errol's story that her grandfather send Errol to help the kids. Kendra does try to contact her grandfather, Stan, about Errol, but she can never get through to Fablehaven.
Errol tells the children that they must retrieve a statue from a nearby mortuary. He claims that the statue's owner belongs to the Society of the Evening Star -- the magical terrorist group that seeks to collapse the preserves like Fablehaven. Errol claims that the Kobolds consider the statue sacred, and that once given the statue, a Kobold must return the statue to its shrine somewhere far away. Things go exactly as Errol describes: the kids retrieve the statue, Kendra gives the statue to the Kobold, and the Kobold goes away. After proving himself to Kendra and Seth, Errol proposes that they help him retrieve another article, and arranges to meet them late at night. On the night of the meeting, Kendra's grandfather Stan finally calls explaining that his phone lines were cut. He quickly listens as Kendra relates her experiences with Errol, and her grandfather explains that Errol has used them to steal property for the Society of the Evening Star. Stan worries what Errol might do to the children if they don't keep their appointment, so he sends a trusted friend, Vanessa, to drive the children to the preserve. Vanessa arrives in a custom sports car, and after narrowly escaping a giant hay monster, she speeds the children off to Fablehaven.
Since the Society has taken such an interest in the children, their grandparents decide to tell the kids some of the secrets of Fablehaven. Each one of the secret preserves stores a hidden artifact with magical properties. If the Society can retrieve all five artifacts and combine them, they can open the gates of the prison where many of the most evil demons lie imprisoned. Stan explains that since the Society clearly knows the location of Fablehaven, he wants to retrieve the artifact and have it moved to another more secure place. He has engaged three trusted friends to help retrieve the artifact. When the tasks don't seem too dangerous, the children get to help look for clues regarding the artifact. The explorers soon learn that one of the three assistants is a traitor, but they cannot determine who. So the race begins for Kendra and Seth to help retrieve the artifact ahead of the traitor.
Rise of the Evening Star sets up this situation within the first few chapters of the book, and the children face many harrowing experiences as they battle against the forces of the Society. Mull demonstrates that he has the skills to pull off not only a successful book, but most likely a successful series. Every chapter introduces some new interesting revelation about the magical world, and almost predictably, the children fall into a precarious situation involving the new facts or skills they learn. Mull manages to end almost every chapter with a minor suspenseful cliffhanger. This sounds a little formulaic, but the pattern doesn't get tedious because the events flow quite naturally -- and often in unexpected directions.
One aspect did surprise me -- especially for a book targeted at young readers. At one point the children make a narrow escape from some evil imps. The children have the aide of the magical puppet Mendigo introduced in the first volume. As the imps pursue the children, Seth commands Mendigo to break the imps' legs to prevent them from following. Kendra clearly adds the caveat that Mendigo must not kill the imps, but she goes along with the maiming of her enemies. In a world of political correctness and arguments for non-violent solutions, I found it a relief that Mull allows his characters to make a natural battlefield decision that involves physical harm to the opponent. I also appreciated that when the children take a shrinking potion, they had to deal with the problems of clothing their miniature bodies and then dealing with finding suitable covering once they resume their normal size. Upon regaining his regular size, Seth dons his grandfather's dressing robe and immediately must run for his life. Although Mull never mentions this directly, I pictured Seth not really having the time to keep cinching the robe closed and running through the woods with his private parts mostly exposed.
The editing in Rise of the Evening Star shows vast improvement over the previous volume. Clearly Mull getting an agent and landing a contract with a large national firm to pick up the first volume's paperback release puts a lot of pressure on the Shadow Mountain team to put more careful attention into Mull's manuscripts. I do wish illustrator Brandon Dorman could choose better scenes to illustrate. At least in this volume he does some shots with Kendra and Seth in action, but again, he isolates the characters so you can't see what the children act against. To me the illustrations don't add any value to Mull's story. Mull has the narrative skills to evoke Fablehaven and his characters in your mind so completely that illustrations fall flat compared to the rich landscape established in your mind.
A few minor points still bothered me. For example, Mull engages in one of my pet peeves -- having hidden children overhear an adult conversation as a means of letting the children learn facts needed to have the story progress. And as I feared, the adults have a conversation about subjects that they would not need to discuss, making the scene entirely manufactured as an information dump for the children's benefit. In this section, not only does Mull engage in my pet peeve, but for about two chapters, the dialog feels unnatural. The words just don't seem to fit correctly in the characters mouths. The characters use vocabulary, word usage, or sentence structure that doesn't match the rest of the book. Fortunately, this weird dialog shift doesn't last long, and you can soon continue reading without getting distracted with thoughts like, "I don't think that character would have really say that."
So let me tell you the really good things about Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star. The story starts with quick moving action that doesn't relent until the very end of the book. Mull continues to expand our understanding of the complex magical world that remains hidden from most humans. And you really can't stop reading at the end of any chapter, because you need to find out what happens next. Because must of Fablehaven remains a mystery, Mull could easily have resorted to pulling rabbits out of hats -- creating problems or solutions that just appear out of nowhere. Instead, he carefully introduces just enough information so that even though just about anything could still happen, almost every event has some clever foreshadowing earlier in the book. I don't think Mull's series can displace something as entrenched as Harry Potter, but it certainly provides a great alternative to those commercialized series -- like Animorphs. And I wouldn't be surprised to heard about Mull selling movie options for the series soon.
Related Reviews
Fablehaven written by Brandon Mull
Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague written by Brandon Mull
Related Items from Amazon.com
  Audio Book |   Hardcover |
