This is the fourth book in the Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull, and was first published 2009 by Shadow Mountain. The audiobook, of this children’s fantasy story, is narrated by E. B. Stevens.
The story of this one is a bit of a mess since the author has put in a lot of side stories that happen before or after this one, but the overall story is about finding one of the artifacts in a Dragon Sanctuary with the Demon Prince, a dark dragon, at their heel. They gather a team, they think is best suited for the mission of retrieving the artifact, leaving a disgruntled Seth behind only to sneak with them as they prowl the land of the dragons.
Some characters who was present before, once again show up. Mara and Gavin among other and some new faces such as the detective Trash is introduced in one of the side plotlines when Kendra is kidnapped which span out for a couple of chapters. Seth’s powers grow, being dubbed a Shadow Charmer by the dying demon, and he is still ignored or seen as a menace despite showing himself incredibly skilled in both causing trouble and getting out of them.
The plotline where no one trust Seth is frankly getting old considering that Seth has proven again and again of being bot witty and skilled. Kendra is… Well, she is my least favorite. She is still a bit of a coward and in this book the story is centered around her losing her trust in people. Well, except her brother, which is ironic since she never trusts him before… Seth struggle with thinking he is evil, which is a bit overdramatic, especially since the message of the last couple of books was that evil actions makes humans evil, they are not born evil like some magical creatures.
I also had a complaint about the book, both this one and previous ones, inability to display realistic grief. In previous books Seth is thought to have died, and Kendra grieve for five seconds. In this one, Seth grieves for five seconds. All the side characters are hardly grieved at all. If you are going to kill a lot of characters in a children’s book you better be ready to handle the subject of grief. Not just write that Kendra cried and then she walked home to speak with her grandparents.
But to be fair, very few book handles grief sensibly. Especially children’s books so I don’t hold it against this series too much since most other books have this problem as well. Now, after all the complaints, I still loved the lore of this story. The way to tame a dragon is interesting and so is Kendra’s and Seth’s powers and how they interact with each other. I just wish that the previous books wouldn’t have constantly claimed the difficulty with killing dragons. That statement became unwittingly a joke in this book, where many dragons are killed.
I must also say that despite the previous books, especially the first one, this one has tried to break some of the traditional gender roles. Nothing too groundbreaking with there are more females fighting, Mara and Vanessa being badasses, and we have the beautiful dragon prince who can turn into a boy fairy. I did dislike the book constantly reprimanding him for being “a sissy” though but since it makes since for that character, coming from a society that adores power, and he did get a rather bad ass move in the end.
Though it still annoys me to no end that Kendra is once again carried to the goal by other people. Her part of the story is mostly as a bystander who translate and charge magical objects and people treat her as a godsend hero, though to be fair. She did get a bit of a more action, she rattled a magical stick and actually tried to hit the bad guy. Though she was rescued by a sky giant and a fairy dragon by the end but she tried at least. I’m not sure what the author is trying to do with her, I’m not convinced he does either.
If I were to summarize it all, the story was messy. It felt like a filler, one that is needed to get all the small information for the last book. We get some decent story at the end, with a betrayal and the demon prince but it was a bit too much side stepping for me to enjoy it properly. It still have some great lore, and intriguing ideas so I can see people adoring this if they doesn’t notice some plot holes such as the previous book mentioning that the only thing being able to kill a dragon is another dragon, and a wizard who turns out to be dragons in human form, only to have several dragons killed in this book with a unicorn horn and then… An adamant sword? I cannot remember but it doesn’t really add up, especially the last one. I would rate it a 7 out of 10 if I were to be kind, maybe a 6 out of 10 if I weren’t. I thought overall that the story began really bad and worked up to fine, it didn’t really astound me like so many other’s but I can understand why other’s might be amazed by the book. It just didn’t tickle my fancy.
With Kind Regards
Senefer.
Read with Senefer 