Fablehaven: Keys to the Demon Prison

Name: Lance Barnes
Class: A3
Book Title: Fablehaven: Keys to the Demon Prison
Author: Brandon Mull
Pages: 588
Rating: ****

Recommendation: This is a pretty good read for a somewhat younger audience that enjoy fantasy novels. I say younger because the two main characters are children. This may seem lame but the children are surrounded by adults that make things interesting.

Summary: Keys to the Demon Prison is about exactly what the title entails. There are five keys required to open the prison containing thousands of demons. This series takes place in the normal world, except the fact that theirs magic and such. There are preserves all over the world that house mythical and magical creatures. At some of these preserves are house "artifacts" which are the keys to the demon prison. These artifacts were hidden to make the demon prison as impregnable as possible. A man named the Sphinx is trying to open the prison and make his own terms with the Demons so he has power. He almost succeeds but is thwarted when one of the main characters, Seth. Seth foolishly heals a demon named Graulus to ease his passing, but Graulus fully recovers and ends up siding with one of The Sphinx's demon allies and takes over the operation to completely obliterate Earth by opening Zzyzx.

Explanation of Rating: Brandon Mull did a great job with this series, it just wasn't very appealing to me. It's worthy of a 5 star for sure, but maybe having the main characters be children wasn't the best of ideas. The way he unravels the plot is done well, but the book seems to cover far too much. I think he easily could have made this into two books so that this doesn't seem to jump around too quickly. The way he involves the reader in certain moments makes the book interesting all the way through, this book may be long but is a definite read for most ages.

Favorite Passage: The dim blade flashed to life, shedding a brilliant white radiance. Kendra immediately felt galvanized, her senses sharpened, as if her whole life had been spent half asleep, and only now had she truly awakened.

This was probably me favorite because of the dire situation they were in and when Kendra's brother, Seth, handed her the legendary sword Vasilis and the way Mull describes the empowerment infused from this sword gave me chills for some reason.