3/5 stars
Synopsis
Warning! This section contains spoilers, if you would like to avoid these spoilers, jump to the review below.
The book started with a group of three boys who were fishing. One boy, Bren, was hoping to catch a legendary fish. Bren noticed smoke above the trees, and decided to investigate. He came across a man cooking dinner. He talked with him for a bit, then went home. A merchant came to the village.
Bren sought out the man in the woods, Maximus, again, and asked him about merchants and whether they were charlatans or not because his dad had said so. He also asked for some advice regarding a bully. Maximus told Bren to release two wasps into the bully’s home. He did that.
Bren’s bullies decided to steal from the merchant. They stole a lot of his wares, and a creature in a bottle too. They broke the bottle and the creature escaped.
The merchant searched for his wares, becoming more panicked when he couldn’t find them. He was mostly concerned about the creature in the bottle. Maximus wandered into the village and talked with the merchant. The merchant explained what the creature was, and that the entire village was in danger from it.
The bully went to the stash of stolen goods, and the merchant found it. Bren and the girl he likes found them as the bully and the merchant started fighting. The bully fell into the lake. He was struggling to swim when something bit his arm off.
Some time passed, and Bren and company decided to go fishing again. There were some people in the water, and they were eaten by the creature. But Bren and company didn’t notice.
Bren’s father discovered the remains of the eaten people. He also found the remains of the fish Bren had been so desperate to catch. The creature then appeared, lurching out of the water and biting Bren’s father in half. Then it bit his mother in half.
Bren, the merchant, and Maximus left the village to go find a crystal to bind the creature in the lake once more. They were able to obtain two crystals.
Outside of the cave where they found the crystals was a giant who was beating up some horse thieves. The giant asked what they were doing there, then said he had always wanted one of the crystals. Bren gave the giant one of the two crystals he got.
Members of the village decided to try and kill the creature, but were all eaten.
On the journey back to the village, the trio was ambushed. Maximus and Bren and a few others set out to capture the creature.
The merchant murdered someone in the village and kidnapped the girl Bren liked. The merchant pushed the girl away, and Bren ran to get her. The creature was coming to attack them and the girl started sliding into the lake. Bren got the girl out of the water and gave her chest compressions as Maximus started fighting the creature.
He kept it at bay long enough for Bren to revive the girl, and for him to rejoin the fight. They bound the creature back into a bottle. Maximus told Bren and the girl to stay where they were, then went in search of the merchant. Bren felt Maximus would need help, however, and decided to go after him. The girl got mad at him, screamed at him that he should have just let her die, and that they were finished.
Maximus and Bren set off in pursuit of the merchant. They found him riding away in terror as he was being pursued by a witch. They captured the merchant and then talked with the witch. The witch took the merchant away.
Review
I thought this book had a nice story, and some of the advice for teens was nice. But…I did feel like it was confused as to what it was trying to be. The storyline and the characters made it seem like the book was meant more for teenagers. The blurb confirmed this. But the writing seemed to be more geared toward adult readers.
When reading, I wasn’t sure who the main character was. The blurb implied it would be Bren but the story made it seem like Maximus was the main character.
There were some grammatical issues with the book, mainly missing commas or words in the sentences. It made the book hard to follow.
I found the scene where Bren’s parents were bit in half to be comical. Their severed legs were left standing. The scene was described as a fountain of gore, entrails swinging from the jaws of the creature. It was a completely different tone than the rest of the book, and honestly, a little shocking.
The scene where Maximus was holding off the creature while flat on his back felt unrealistic. This creature had slaughtered any who stood in front of it with ease while it was smaller. But now, at the very end of the book, the creature was held off by a single man who had no advantages over it. His positioning was bad, he’d lost his weapons, and he was injured. The creature, which had grown immensely, suddenly had trouble killing him though because the plot demanded it. I found that hard to believe. Also, they were fighting it, and the wounds the creature inflicted were just flesh wounds A scrape here, and small puncture there, when previously it was taking limbs off of people with one bite or chomping people in half with no effort. Then when it came time for the big battle at the end, I felt like the creature was suddenly crippled even though it was much larger and more ferocious than earlier in the book. When authors write, the antagonist needs to be just as capable as the protagonist.
All in all, this was a nice story for younger audiences. There were just some things that I thought were odd, and grammatical errors throughout.
Fireheart Books 