Skip to main content

Featured

Blog Tour Review - To Cage A God by Elizabeth May

 Blog Tour Review - To Cage A God by Elizabeth May To cage a god is divine. To be divine is to rule. To rule is to destroy. Using ancient secrets, Galina and Sera’s mother grafted gods into their bones. Bound to brutal deities and granted forbidden power no commoner has held in a millennia, the sisters have grown up to become living weapons. Raised to overthrow an empire―no matter the cost. With their mother gone and their country on the brink of war, it falls to the sisters to take the helm of the rebellion and end the cruel reign of a royal family possessed by destructive gods. Because when the ruling alurea invade, they conquer with fire and blood. And when they clash, common folk burn. While Sera reunites with her estranged lover turned violent rebel leader, Galina infiltrates the palace. In this world of deception and danger, her only refuge is an isolated princess, whose whip-smart tongue and sharp gaze threaten to uncover Galina’s secret. Torn between desire and duty, Galina mus

Review - The Crackledawn Dragon by Abi Elphinstone

Review - The Crackledawn Dragon by Abi Elphinstone

11-year-old Zebedee Bolt is on the run. Again. Only this time it’s not the police who find him. It’s an evil harpy called Morg. And when she hauls him into Crackledawn, an Unmapped kingdom that conjures sunlight for our world, Zeb discovers running away only gets you so far.

When magic’s involved, you’ve got to pick a side. And though Zeb vowed he wouldn’t trust anyone ever again, he didn’t expect to stumble aboard The Kerfuffle, an enchanted boat belonging to a girl called Oonie and her talking chameleon, Mrs Fickletint.

Suddenly, Zeb finds himself on a voyage complete with silver whales, fire krakens and underwater palaces. Can he muster up enough trust in others, and in magic, to summon a dragon, find the Ember Scroll and defeat Morg once and for all?

This is a story about saving the world but it’s also a story about trusting friends, and chameleons, even when kingdoms are falling apart. 



I have adored the Unmapped Chronicles series since the World Book Day book, Everdark, so I was very excited to get my hands on an early copy of the final book in the series, and what an impressive finale!

The Unmapped Chronicles is Abi's Narnia, a vast, complex world of magic and wonder. Like Narnia, it is a world that runs parallel to our own, with people, mainly children, from our world occasionally finding their way there through magical portals of all kinds when an appropriate saviour or two might be needed. 

The imagination, the inventiveness, the ridiculous yet oh so clever naming of everything and everyone, the Unmapped Kingdoms are alive with magic and wonder, and I've come to care about each one and all their brilliantly bizarre inhabitants.

But the true magic in these stories is that Abi Elphinstone takes characters who are broken, who are hurting, who don't fit in and lash out at the world around them, and drops them into these magical stories where they're able to find what they need.

This, for me, is the most striking difference between Abi's books and the children's fantasy I grew up reading, and it's sometimes startling, occasionally upsetting and always rewarding. Zebedee Bolt, alone and distrusting of the world, is another brilliant example of this.

The Crackledawn Dragon is another Abi Elphinstone story that is just bristling with empathy and understanding and compassion and love, and that's as magical and beautiful as the dragons, merfolk and Unmappers in the story.

It's a beautiful conclusion to the series, I can't wait to see what Abi does next, and it's all wrapped up in a gorgeous George Ermos cover.

With the Unmapped Chronicles series, Abi Elphinstone has secured her position as one of the great children's fantasy authors.

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

The Crackledawn Dragon by Abi Elphinstone is out now, published by Simon and Schuster

I was given a review copy via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

Comments

Popular Posts