Five Kingdoms Sky Raiders by: Brandon Mull

Me with author Brandon Mull 

I had the privilege this past spring to host a book signing at my elementary school with Brandon Mull.  My students and I enjoy his books and it was exciting to be among the first to get a signed copy of his newest series Five Kingdoms Sky Raiders.  This will be a series of five books and I am looking forward to book #2 since I just finished reading book #1.

This is a fantasy adventure that I won't soon forget.

Cole and his friends are looking forward to visiting a haunted house while out trick-or-treating on Haloween.  When they enter the basement of the house, only to find themselves locked, they become really scared.  Before they know it, they are being kidnapped and taken down a tunnel in the basement floor.  Cole is able to hide himself from the kidnappers.  After the kidnappers leave the basement, he decides that it is up to him to rescue his friends.  With trepidation, he enters the tunnel.  He lands in a barren land called Sambria, and learns that his friends are now slaves in a place called the Outskirts.  Cole is soon captured and taken and sold to the leader of the Sky Raiders.  As a Sky Raider, he is trained to help salvage items from the floating castles that appear almost everyday.  In the land of Sambria most things are floating in the air.  If you make the wrong move on a floating castle,  you will fall into nothing, never to be seen again.  With the help of his jumping sword, Cole becomes a skilled sky raider and soon he is helping a lost princess, Mira, regain her powers of shaping in order to save the kingdom from her evil father.

The land of Sambria has many interesting characters and magical items.  Mira is a shaper, shapers  can create items that look real but are not.  This is the reason Cole's friends were kidnapped.  The High King wants to train more people to be shapers and those living on earth seem to have some shaping talent.  People who meet Cole are surprised he came to their land on his own and feel that he is powerful in different ways then they are used to.  Cole relies on his jumping sword, which is his method of travel, as well as a weapon with which to fight. He also finds a magic shawl that when worn places you under the control of the shawl's owner.  A shawl might not sound very important, but believe me, it comes in handy.  When Mira shares the secret of who she really is the friends are soon on the run.  Stealing a floating boat, they enter a cloud wall that turns out to be a funnel cloud.  They are sure all is lost until they are rescued from the funnel cloud.  Will Cole ever find his friends?  You will love this book!  See you at a bookstore when book #2 is released.

Happy Daily Reading
Deanna