Sky Raiders by Brandon Mull
Series Name: Five Kingdoms
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Isekai
Intended Age Group: 8-12
Publisher: Aladdin/Simon & Schuster
Edition: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-4424-9701-6
Rating: 3.5/5
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Description from the Book
Cole Randolph is just trying to have fun with his friends on Halloween. But their trip to a neighborhood haunted house turns out to be the start of a wild adventure when Cole watches his friends being whisked away through a mysterious passage.
Cole dives in after them, only to emerge somewhere that’s very clearly no longer Mesa, Arizona. He soon learns he’s come to a place called the Outskirts.
Made up of five kingdoms, the Outskirts lies between wakefulness and dreaming, reality and imagination, life and death. The balance of power in the five kingdoms has been upset, and the magic there is becoming unstable. It’s up to Cole and an unusual girl named Mira to set things right, rescue his friends, and hopefully survive long enough for Cole to find his way back home….
Personal & Info
I love the Fablehaven series, so I want to try more books by the same author. This book is volume one of the Five Kingdoms series. It’s five volumes long, and I have all five ahead of time, because I have high hopes. If I like this series, I’ll probably continue to buy books by Brandon Mull.
Characters
Cole Randolph is the main character. He’s in sixth grade, and shorter than most in his class.
Dalton is Cole’s best friend. He’s on the shorter side, like Cole, and he is easily stressed and anxious.
Jenna Hunt is Cole’s childhood crush. He swears he doesn’t like her that way anymore, but it’s hard to tell.
Mira is an eleven year old girl who works for the Sky Raiders. She was a scout until she showed shaping potential.
Durny is a professional looking man with a cain. He works for the Sky Raiders as their head shaper, and has a close relationship with Mira.
Jace is a scout for the Sky Raiders. He seems moody, arrogant, and rash, but good at heart. I suspect he will have a significant amount of character development as the series progresses.
Ruben, mostly known as Twitch, is around ten. He’s a scout for the Sky Raiders, and he is overly cautious.
Liam is a talented shaper. He lives in hiding, but helps out with the adventure whenever he can.
There are a ton of characters with names that hold little significance as a whole. The ones I listed here are the ones I think are most important. There are more plot significant characters, but I feel some of those are better off not said to keep some surprise in the story. The ones here are the ones I feel are most important. If the ones I chose not to list become bigger roles later in the series, I will list them in those volumes and possibly come back here to add them in.
Story & Thoughts
This book pulls a plot twist within the first fifty pages. It’s not really a spoiler, because the first fifty pages of a book are basically the introduction. The premise states it’s up to Cole and a girl named Mira to save his friends. The story starts off with Cole following abductors through a portal to do just that, and I thought it would be like a jumping off point where he might accomplish something and regroup or what have you, but that’s not what happens. He almost immediately gets caught and enslaved along with his friends.
As the first volume in the series, there’s a lot of ground to cover with world building. I think this book does that very well while pushing the story along. Mira takes the time to explain how long years and seasons and days are. Another character, Declan, functions as a sort of NPC lore dump. You know, like how in video games there are characters to talk to where you can just ask them a bunch of questions and they give long winded explanations? That’s Declan, except he’s an important person.
It seems like each book is going to take place in a different kingdom of the Outskirts, so we’ll likely get lore for each area as the story progresses.
I love the whole shaping concept. I’ll let the book explain what that is. The items made with that remind me a lot of D&D magic items. The basic examples use ropes that can do various tasks, and some of those examples have basically the same descriptions as D&D items.
Brady’s Wilderness is really cool. I think seeing that place animated or live action would be amazing. Even a terrible jerky 80s rendering with bad CG and animatronics would make it work.
Content Warnings
Slavery is a big industry in the Outskirts. If you don’t like elements of slavery in your stories, this series is not for you.
There is a young character whose number of years is more than their appearance, but not in a creepy way. They are a child, and think of themself as a child, despite their number of years. Any crushes regarding this character are not intended to be creepy. The idea is they are as old as they claim to be, because they have never been any other age. I can see how this might still upset some people, so just use your own discretion.