He is continually torn between rescuing his friends from slaver and sticking with his new friends through their pending dangers, which feels right.

Cole does some amazing things, but we feel as though he’s rising the occasion with a degree of luck rather than because he possesses any larger-than-life abilities. Mull does a good job of making his main characters seem like ordinary kids, with both strengths and weaknesses. I’m finding it enjoyable enough, though it’s no Beyonders, which I thoroughly enjoyed, probably because it was more mature in its themes and tone. My kids enjoyed it, and my youngest already has his name on the waiting list for the next book at the library. The mood there is somewhat whimsical, though there’s certainly something darker lurking about the edges. Each of the five kingdoms uses a different type of magic, and we only see one of them, Sambria, in the first book. And, I also have to add, the setting is more geared to a middle-grade audience than adult (as it should be, I admit grudgingly). There’s a sense of danger, as well, but the tone of the novel is certainly more Candy Shop War than Beyonders, and the level of intensity, so far, is below that of Fablehaven. The world itself is quite interesting, and there is certainly a lot of adventure.

I wanted to create a world that opened up story possibilities I haven’t seen before.” I wanted to merge some of the fun I put into Candy Shop War, with the discovery and adventure from Fablehaven, with some of the big world-building like I did in Beyonders. In his Author One-on-One on, Mull describes the series this way: “With Five Kingdoms, I wanted to bring together much of what I do best as a writer into one place. But Cole himself may hold more potential than anyone realizes. He makes some new friends and allies only to find out one of them is central to a looming battle for control of the Five Kingdoms. Cole is forced to leave his friends when he is sold to the Sky Raiders, a gang of salvagers who loot the sky castles beyond the Brink. The premise is that a boy named Cole and his two friends wind up in an unknown world known as The Outskirts after being ambushed by slavers in a haunted house. We recently got our hands on Sky Raiders and read it as a family. The first book, Sky Raiders came out earlier this year, and the second, Rogue Knight is due out in two months. Brandon Mull has a new series, Five Kingdoms, out.

Sky raiders series