Book review. The Key of Kilenya

I had the opportunity to receive a free copy of The Key of Kilenya to review for Andrea Pearson on her online book tour. Though the book was free, it did not effect this review.
The following is a summary of what the book is about.

When two vicious wolves chase fourteen-year-old Jacob Clark down a path from our world into another, his life is forever changed. He has no idea they have been sent by the Lorkon—evil, immortal beings who are jealous of powers he doesn’t know he possesses—powers they desire to control.

The inhabitants of the new world desperately need Jacob's help in recovering a magical key that was stolen by the Lorkon and is somehow linked to him. If he helps them, his life will be at risk. But if he chooses not to help them, both our world and theirs will be in danger. The Lorkon will stop at nothing to unleash the power of the key—and Jacob's special abilities.


So here are my thoughts about the book:

I have to admit that I didn't relate to the main character of the book very well, but that's probably because he was a 14 yr old boy, and I'm a 30 something mother, but he was still a likeable kid. He seemed a little too obsessed with the basketball tryouts that he missed when he finds himself transported to another world through some kind of passageway hidden in the forest near his home.  I would have expected him to be too amazed at the idea of being in a new world for him to obsess about things back at home. There were also lots of times when something he said or did, didn't really seem like it would be coming from a 14 yr old, but again, I'm more than twice his age and can't really remember that far back. ;)

The book has lots of action and wonderful magical elements in it. The descriptions are fun and I could totally see what he was experiencing. My favorite part was when he had to travel through a dark tunnel by feel since using any light revealed people trapped in the actual stone of the mountain they had to pass through.

There is a lot of back story to this book that was delivered in a clever way through a journal Jacob had to read, (and I loved how the journal only showed one page at a time and wouldn't reveal more until you'd read the words shown to you first, making it impossible to skip ahead.) I did find myself wanting to read the journal myself and not worry about what Jacob was doing. But then Jacob would get into a predicament and I'd get caught up with his story again.

This is the beginning of a series and so there are many questions brought up that are left unanswered, which irritates and interests me at the same time.  The parents and adults in this story seemed slightly shady to me. They wanted Jacob and his new friend Akeno to do something huge and important, but didn't give them much information. It's like they felt it would be better for them to stumble across things themselves. And a few times, magical things solved a problem that arose without giving me a real sense that it needed to happen other than to get them out of the predicament. Maybe in the following books, we'll learn how the magic works better since Jacob and Akeno didn't know and we were experiencing things with them.

Overall, it was an interesting book, and I would recommend it for kids who could relate to Jacob. My ten yr old and 8 yr old enjoyed the beginning that we've started reading together and we'll see how it goes with them.


To purchase her book go HERE, it's free for a bit.

To learn more about Andrea and her series go HERE