Sea of Kings review
Sorry no second post last week! I got this review about halfway done and then didn’t get back to it until today!! But for older middle grade readers, this one is a LOT of fun. Here it is…
Today I have a great book that bridges middle grade an YA to review. I received a free copy of Sea of Kings from LibraryThing’s monthly book giveaway. Just a quick shout out to them, thanks for letting me get this one to review! It was pretty fun and easy and quick; I read pretty much the whole thing while on vacation last week. As a bonus, Melissa Hope gives a shout out to BYU-I creative writing students in her acknowledgements so I’m thinking LDS author, though she apparently lives in Florida (can’t blame her there!).
This story appears to be second world fantasy, so not our real Earth though it has a lot in common. The setting is a group of tropical islands that have banded together politically though each has their own distinct cultural markers, tech, and economy. They’re pretty much seven interdependent city-states each with their own king that work together to keep the peace. The map at the beginning of the book is helpful for knowing where all the islands are in relation to each other. We start on Ondule and visit several different islands over the course of the book.
The attention to detail in the worldbuilding is really great in this book. Actually, it’s so detailed that I almost think the book should be classified as YA and not middle grade because of how many little things there are; some of them end up being important and some not. My favorite might be the mail system in Ondule, which is facilitated by messages in bottles that go through tubes above the buildings in their town. The idea of it is just fun, though I’m not sure it’s really practical in real life. The glass palace in Martesia was pretty cool too, as were their electric octopuses.
There are a ton of named characters in this story. A lot more than was probably strictly necessary, I would say. Noa is the main character, and the crown prince of Ondule. His brother Dagan is also an important secondary character, and his sister Lana and father King Titus are good motivation throughout the story. Then we have a whole collection of kids from the town that provide side-kick comic relief and a group of people for Noa to practice leading. Vim and Aaron are the only ones I distinctly remember though, and there were a set of trouble making twins… The named servants and townspeople and other kings, generals, sailors/pirates and more just became a little much by the end. I almost wanted a glossary or a notepad to keep track of character names. It helps the world be a bit fuller, but it was also a bit confusing.
So Noa’s journey starts when he finds a pirate medallion in the sand of a beach he’s not supposed to be visiting. Soon after, his town is taken over by a neighboring king and some pirates. Noa, Dagan, and his friends are the only ones available to get help, so they steal a pirate ship and head to the next island over. Instead of getting help though, they have to end up running away since the king thinks they’re just little pirates. They pick up a helpful stowaway here, though they have troubles with storms and pirates and almost don’t make it through. At a hidden island they’re able to get some help, but the crew mutinies and leaves Noa on the beach alone. Noa then has to use the pirates to confront the evil and get some answers about his family and past. As it is a middle grade book, everything works out generally okay though some of the parts are suspenseful. By the end, Noa has become a much better leader and more knowledgeable about both the world and his place in it. At the beginning of the story, he believed books could give him every answer worth having, but he learns the value of experience when he can’t directly apply all his book learning to his surroundings.
I am not a huge fan of middle grade books myself, though I’ve read a bunch of them thanks to having my kids wanting me to read with/to them. It was a bit obvious and heavy handed in the plot compared to what I normally would choose and because of that I didn’t rate it as highly as I might have. The story, characters, and writing are all solid and my 11yo is really excited to read this soon. If you’re looking for a good book that’s somewhere in between middle grade fiction and YA, this might be a good one to check out.
