Everdark by Abi Elphinstone
It is midnight in Crackledawn – a midnight full of magic. Sea dragons stir in the depths of the ocean, silver whales surface beneath the moon and sand goblins line the shores. Everyone is waiting for the phoenix, the guardian of the kingdom’s magic, to rise up from the forests of Everdark.
But there is no sign of the phoenix tonight. Something else surges up out of Everdark instead: a harpy bent on stealing Crackledawn’s magic.
It is up to an eleven-year-old girl called Smudge and an eccentric monkey called Bartholomew to set sail beyond the legendary Northswirl and stop the harpy before it’s too late.
So, grab your compass and roll down your sail – the first adventure in THE UNMAPPED CHRONICLES is about to begin…
Rating:
I enjoyed this little book so much and it made me want to read Rumblestar even more (I already wanted to).
We meet Smudge, who isn’t the very best at, well, anything. She struggles to be a good student, and isn’t sure she fits the potential careers she can have. We also meet her monkey companion, Bartholomew, and well, poor Smudge has no choice but to save the world because she is the only one that wasn’t cursed.
So she sets off to try to sort this out, with just her courage, and her unusual view of the world and ideas.
I enjoyed reading it very much. It is a good reminder of why I still love to read Middle Grade books even if I have no children myself and I am most definitely not a child myself.
The quest keeps moving forward, and the book does a good job at pointing out that being different and not fitting the status quo isn’t always bad, but rather, gives you an opportunity to be something else. Here it is an adventurer, but in our world we would potentially consider them to be the creatives, the innovators.
There’s a lot of magic, a lot of happy accidents that somehow help them out and a lot of courage from Smudge.