Monday Musings \\ Fablehaven Series Review

Fablehaven (the complete) Series by Brandon Mull

Premise: Kendra and Seth Sorenson have no idea that their grandparents are the caretakers of a preserve for magical creatures, called Fablehaven. When they come to stay while their parents are on vacation, the Sorenson siblings are plunged into the midst of a dangerous war between the demons and fairies, dark and light creatures. As the increasingly desperate situations call for increasingly desperate measures, their bravery saves the day while giving them abilities they never dreamed of. In the next two years, they are victim to dragons, betrayel, magic, captivity, time travel, duels, griffons, wraiths, dangerous gambles with deadly magical beings, and a struggle that will both rip them away from their family and help find them again.

Language: None

Content: Plenty of violence, drowning, dangerous magical creatures, but not really any blood or gore. Kidnapping, murder.

Stars: 4 1/2

I went through a difficult breakup with this series when I finished. After such an explosive, beautiful last book, it was like 11 o'clock at night when I finished and I just went, sat down by my older sister, and hugged her a long time. It was such an awesome series I that couldn't face the fact that it was over.

The thing about juvenile fiction is that sometimes the grownups simply put too much confidence in the children, or absolutely none. Fablehaven did a wonderful job of balancing it perfectly. The grownups were both very responible about protecting the children, while not undermining them and using their help when it was needed.

It took the first three or four books to get to this point, and up until that point, they would disobey their grandparents to do the right thing.

What I enjoyed most was the dynamic of Kendra and Seth as siblings. Total opposites. They are both the main characters, though Kendra a little more than Seth. Kendra was responsible, level headed, polite and quietly brave.

Her younger brother Seth, however, is goofy, recklessly courageous, constantly cracking jokes, and always disobeying. But his disobedience always has consequences, and he learns eventually to respect his grandparents.

Another thing that really stood out to me about this series was how polite the kids were to the badguy--a classy, clever man. They despise him, but are always very polite when speaking to him. It was refreshing to read books where they weren't constantly insulting, yelling, or cursing at the antagonist.

This series had wonderful, colorful side characters, lots of humor, and awesome ancient evils and clever badguys. The secret magical world takes on a global-level as the series progresses.

The only thing that I think people might have a problem with are the demons and zombies, but neither are overplayed. They are simply portrayed as other magical creatures like fairies, trolls, dragons, giants and satyrs. There's nothing weird or after-lifey or religously-off about them.

I highly recommend this series to anyone 10+. It has become one of my favorite book series, and has given me so many ideas for my own books. 

~The Reader in the Attic