Author: James A. Owen
Published: October 2010
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
Series: The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica #5
376 pages (hardcover)
Okay, for some odd reason, I thought book five was going to be the last book in the series, but based on the ending, it’s obvious that there’s going to be more books, if not several more. Not that I’m complaining — the series may have started out shaky to me, but it’s becoming better and more complex with every installment, so I definitely look forward to reading any and all future books. I was just surprised that it wasn’t the last one because, well, the main characters are getting old by YA novel standards for protagonists.
I’m digressing though. Book five of the Imaginarium Geographica is really superb. It’s another time traveling, mind twisting plot of a book, so if you like that kind of stuff, you’ll love this:
In The Dragon’s Apprentice, the Keep of Time has finally completely and utterly fallen apart. This has caused some major problems in the real world and the Archipelago. Time in the Archipelago has always moved slower, in a ‘different way’ from time in the real world. With the Keep gone, the Archipelago has been separated from the real world, chronically and physically. The Caretakers, John and Jack (something, er, happened to Charles) just so happened to have been in the Archipelago at the time when the rift between the worlds ripped open.
Desperate to find a way to link the two worlds so they can go home, and not fully understanding the extent of the damage, William Shakespeare devises a special bridge that in theory will be able to connect the two worlds. But he realized a miscalculation too late and Jack and John have already crossed the bridge. The other Caretakers quickly fix the problem and cross the bridge themselves to retrieve Jack and John, only to find two years have already passed in what was, to them, a handful of minutes! They realize something terrible has happened with Time.
Bringing Jack and John back to the Archipelago, Caretakers past and present, as well as former enemies, must find a way to get into the Archipelago again and put a stop to the new enemy on the rise — the Echthroi, promordial Shadows — by convincing the dragon’s apprentice to become a dragon. But who the dragon’s apprentice is, nobody knows.
You know the kind of stories where the timelines cause the characters’ lives to start overlapping and becoming almost paradoxical? This is that kind of book. As the reader, you really have to pay attention or just get completely lost. Not to mention all the time travel rules. I know this kind of book (or rather, I should say book series, as that is what it’s shaping up to be) may not appeal to some people, but I thrive on time-loop plots, so needless to say, I loved this one. Not quite as much as I love The Indigo King (which had a much simpler time-travel plot) but this is definitely up there. Although I do kind of wonder, when are we going to start focussing on the Imaginarium Geographica, the namesake of the series, again. It’s always there, in the peripherals of the plot, but it hasn’t been truly “important” for a number of books now. Fixing time seems to be the thing this series is heading to.
Redemption seems to be the key theme to this book. I was feeling kind of, “He’s back again??” when Mordred (or whatever you want to call him by) came back, but at least he wasn’t the main villain. Actually, he wasn’t a villain at all, and when I really thought about it, I have to applaud the author for taking this evil-to-the-bone character and transforming him, bit by bit with each book, into a sympathetic character, and one who becomes arguably good. It’s no small feat to do that, but I think Owen has done it rather successfully, even if not perfectly.
As for the new villains, I’m a bit confused by it, or them. The primordial Shadows. I may have simply just misread a key part or something, but I never fully understood where they came from and what the heck they are doing. Granted, they weren’t the most focal part of the story, so perhaps they/it will grow into its role more so in the upcoming novels. But it does leave me a bit perplexed in that regard. Especially that one scene (which I don’t think is too spoiler-ish; if anything, it’d be abstract to one who hasn’t read the book), where one of the characters runs into him in a dark alley or something, and it’s revealed that the Shadow is not the enemy’s true form, because it says in the book that the Echthros “[changes] back to its original shape”, and is implied that it may be a human shape. Now, this leaves me with all sorts of questions, because not much else is said about the Echthros Shadow afterwards. Hmmm.
I found this book really fun and surprising. Like its predecessors, it’s another adventure fantasy book, and like I’ve been saying, each installment of the series just gets better and better, not only in story but also in writing. Seriously, compare the writing in this book to the very first one — the difference is very noticeable. The fact that each book has been better and better just makes me more excited for the next one to come.
My Rating: 5/5
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