Keeper of the Lost Cities
By Shannon Messenger
Hi! Have you ever met an elf? Well, Sophie is an elf. She lives in the human realm. But elves aren’t really what we think they are – small little men in red and green suits. (Although, the ones that work in Santa’s workshop are, but we’re not talking about those kinds of elves.) We’re talking about the elves who tried to make a truce with the humans so that the humans could live happily ever after and with magic. But the humans decided not to agree to the truce and went on and caused their own troubles in life. Could you believe how silly that was? If the humans had decided to make a truce back then, we could be flying by now!
It all starts when a young boy named Fitz shows up and takes Sophie with him to the elf land where all the elves lived. Sophie was able to stare into Fitz’s mind and read his thoughts. She was someone who could read people’s minds, although Fitz was a highly trained elf and nobody could ever read into his mind… except for Sophie. Also, on Sophie's tribunal of whether she was to go to the best school for elves or not (called Foxfire), she read one of the great elder’s mind. The great elder is the oldest of the elves. (By the way, elves never die of old age.) He was furious that she read his mind. Nobody had ever done it before. But, she passed into getting into Foxfire.
On her first day at the school, a few things went wrong. One of them was that she whipped a potion out onto Lady Galvin's cape! Lady Galvin was one of the hardest teacher’s at Foxfire. Sophie was excused from the class, so she went out to roam the halls since it wasn’t time for the next class yet. There, she met a boy named Keefe. He was one of the cool boys. He asked her what she was out for. When she told him, he liked her immediately because he was always a troublemaker.
About two months later, it was almost mid-term. She was definitely not going to pass in transporting. That was when you moved from one side of the room to the other. She only had 1.5% concentration, and she had to have at least 75% to pass. But she did pass. And the hard thing was that she still had to make it through the school year. And the hardest of the elders was trying to fail her.
At that time, Sophie didn’t know that great secrets lurked in her mind. Some people were even willing to kill her for them. She was in grave danger in the elf world! But she was also in grave danger in the human world! Will Sophie pass her trials and continue on in her school work? Or will she be cast back into the human world? Will Sophie be caught by the people who are willing to kill her for her secrets? Or will she live in peace and harmony in the elf world? As I always say, read the book to find out!
I recommend this book to readers who like adventure stories and suspense. This story is filled with that and much more. There are many emotions. One where Sophie feels people have betrayed her, and another when she is happy and sad and so on. This is the story of how Sophie turned from a human to an elf and what she did when she was in the elf world.
Although, I recommend this book to children who are at least older than 7 because this book has a few hard words that young readers probably couldn’t understand. But, their parents could read it aloud to them.
P.S. This is the first book in a series.
A few helpful things I like to say about the books I read:
“Run and Get Mom” (how I describe the scariness factor): There were a few scary parts, but none of which I couldn’t handle, and I think you’ll be able to handle them, too.
“Yucky-Lovey Stuff” (how I describe the romance factor): There were a few yucky-lovey parts in this book, but none of them involved kissing.
I give this book 5 wands.
I loved it! Although it wasn’t my absolute favorite book, it was really good! And if you like Harry Potter, Ella Enchanted, or some of the other adventurous books I’ve reviewed, you’ll love this one!
