15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful fantasy read for 10 to 14 year olds!, June 29, 2006
Max Sumner is a very rich kid in the small town of Avalon, Minnesota whose parents have just divorced. He lives with his mom and baby sister who is 18 months old. This summer Max wouldn't have anything to do if it weren't for his friends Harley, Ernie and Natalia. They all meet at Mr. Iverson's store "Shoppe of Antiquities" to play a card game Mr. Iverson taught and is teaching them called Round Table. I imagine this is much like the Magic fantasy game my older sons played.
The four friends call themselves the Grey Griffins and love to meet in their tree clubhouse or each other's homes. Max loves going to his grandmother's home to spend the night. While there he discovers a magical book and accidentally lets loose a mischievous faerie called a spriggan that is also a shape shifter! She tricks him into releasing an evil thing called a Shadow and from then on the adventures and excitement are non-stop!
I read this book at the request of my 7th grade son who bought it at a school book fair. It is very well done and I can see why he looks forward to the next installment!
For parents, I also loved this book as the authors did not feel the need to put in vulgar and offensive language!! It is so refreshing to have a book that you KNOW is fine for your son/daughter to read. So many of the so-called young adult books these days have alot of swearing, smoking, drinking, etc. even if the characters are as young as these.
A pleasure!!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A somewhat bumpy, but enjoyable adventure, December 31, 2007
It's been said that Jon Lewis and Derek Benz, the authors of this story, were childhood friends who used to hang out together and pretend that they were running from goblins, monsters and other things as they acted out fantasy stories. For better or for worse, it shows in this book and helps shape it.
The Revenge of the Shadow King is a fantasy book about a group of friends who always hang out together, and enjoy playing a card game called Round Table. When strange events start to occur, it begins to look as if the characters from the card game are starting to come to life and appear in the real world. Things get stranger and more dire as the chaos only gets worse and begins to spread through the whole town, and Max and his friends are stuck in the middle of it.
Many creepy and violent things happen throughout the story. Characters become possessed, mysterious villains show up at the worst times, and there are many close brushes with death. If that's not enough, the kids even get framed for something they didn't do.
Max is developed enough to get us to know him a little better, as we get to understand why he dislikes his family's wealth, why he doesn't get along with his parents, and to some degree, his fear of his possible destiny. His friends don't fare so well in the characterization department. They show enough personality traits to make them interesting and likeable, but not enough to really flesh most of them out. The two boys can be summed up in simple sentences: Harley is a tough kid, but a nice guy deep down inside. Ernie is an asthmatic, overeating wimp who gets scared easily and is afraid to risk his life to help his friends.
Natalia's personality is the most detailed one out of Max's friends. She is "girly", riding around on a pink bicycle with tassels and unicorn stickers, and enjoying occasions that give her an excuse to dress up. She is smart, and carries a notebook which she uses to write things down to try to help herself figure things out. She likes to snoop around and investigate to try to learn things on her own. She's bossy and pinches people who annoy her. But she also has a strong sense of justice. For instance, there is one time when her friends express a desire to get revenge on Ray, a bully who has changed into a monster against his will who now poses a genuine threat to their life. Natalia rebukes them, claiming that his unfortunate, and unwilling, transformation made him someone to pity rather than to hate, and that he needed to be rescued from his fate. I like Natalia second most out of the characters, and can only wish Ernie and Harley could be developed as much.
The story is all about the adventures Max and his friends go on. There is always something interesting happening in each chapter, propelling the story along at a nice pace. On the other hand, quite a lot of it seems semi-random. There are plot elements that are picked up and then rarely touched upon afterward. For example, Max discovers he can sense where magic portals appear that take him to another world. We're told in the next few sentences that he sensed portals all throughout school over the next few days. After that, portals don't get mentioned for a long time, only for us to find out that Max can no longer sense them, until he suddenly uses one much later in the story. Essentially, what could have been a neat plot element was mostly unused. Similarly with a creature called a spriggan, who Max meets early on. He likes the spriggan, but he seems to forget about it around the time the book forgets about it. We are later told occasionally that he likes and misses the spriggan, but it appears in the story and is mentioned so rarely that I just didn't feel the connection.
There are also some seemingly random plot elements that are brought up and then totally left unused. At one point, a portal opens up, and Max tries to convince his friends to follow him in there. He lies to Natalia by claiming there are unicorns inside, and lo and behold, there are. There are a lot of neat things inside the world in the portal, but they are out of that world by the end of the chapter, and it is NEVER mentioned again. Not only is it not revisited, but it's not even mentioned in dialog or the plot. There are a couple instances of things like this, where a plot element that could have been great if expanded upon ended up being forgotten, just when I was really hoping to learn more about it.
Fortunately, there are some major plot elements that flesh out the story. The capture of an important adult figure, for instance, plays a pivotal role in the story, and is developed well enough for the audience to get engaged in his rescue. Another important development concerns a bully being possessed and changed into a monster, who makes repeat appearances throughout the story. There are a number of continuing plot threads and important characters, but there's also just as many minor random or forgotten events.
Likewise, there's many deus ex machina-esque close calls. Kids are about to be skewered by a goblin? Good thing a wandering wizard is nearby to stop it with a spell. About to be skewered by the same goblin again? Good thing a truck driver ran it over. An explanation is later given for these close calls, but I was hoping to see the kids become more self-sufficient. They do, but they seem to survive their perils more often not through their own wits or skill, but through luck and chance.
The thing is, much of why the book is this way can probably be chalked up to what I said in the first sentence. The authors were childhood friends who used to pretend that the events in this book were happening to them as they acted them out. That's what the book feels like: a group of kids experiencing a series of random violent adventures with some continuing/recurring plot elements. At times, it seems to follow the flow of make-believe play: "Pretend that the evil witch just sent a goblin to get us." "The goblin's back! Run!" "He's almost got me!" "A portal just opened, look! Head for the portal!" This also explains the occasional randomness of the plot: "Oh good, we just escaped through a portal." "But the portal took us right where the bad guys are, and now we have to make sure they can't see us." That's just the impression I get from reading this book. It's enjoyable fun, but full of contrivances.
Also, likely for the same reason, the dialog during the adventurous moments tends to sound more like what kids would say while pretending to be in danger than what they'd say if they really *were* in danger. While adventure novels obviously don't lean too closely towards realism so as not to ruin the fun, the dialog and storytelling do tend to make the kids seem like they are maybe a little *too* brave and willing to risk their lives, choosing to jump into adventure rather than being forced into it by circumstance. Then again, this is rather common for adventure stories - but the length and tone of the book led me to expect that it would be a little more realistic and take itself more seriously, so the tone of the dialog was quite unexpected.
There is one glowing positive that came from this story's "two friends just playing" origins: there is a great deal of banter - conversations the characters have when they're together and just hanging out. These scenes are plentiful and do a great job of making the kids more personable and likeable as characters. There were many times when I felt as if I could have been there, so believable were these moments.
The friendly banter and "pretend" adventure dialog combine to create a playfully adventurous mood. To be honest, once I got used to it, I began to enjoy this mixture. It defuses the seriousness once might expect from the menacing artwork on this hardcover book, or even the sheer amount of violence and close calls within, but it also makes the story more fun, which is possibly what the authors intended.
Even with its flaws, I was glued to the book throughout, save for the last few chapters. Deus ex machinas aside, I enjoyed the kids' constant brushes with danger. Even with the occasionally forgotten plot elements and sometimes seemingly random events, I still had fun seeing what happened to the characters. The Revenge of the Shadow King feels like the type of story that just flowed largely linearly from the author's imagination, albeit with a number of elements planned out beforehand. Not the most realistically fleshed-out story in existance, but an enjoyable way to get wrapped up in the moment, see what happens next, and have a fun time.
I've already ordered the sequels and will gladly read them when they arrive in the mail.
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