Meggie’s father, Mo, has a gift. He can read a book aloud so realistically that characters leap from the page. Unfortunately, he once accidentally pulled several villains into this world, and they’ve chased him from place to place ever since. When they finally catch up with the family after nine years, Meggie has to cope with the sort of adventure that she’s only read about, and her actions will either spare or condemn them.

I’ve got to admit, this one bored me a little bit. It’s an epic adventure, and I’m not really an adventure kind of girl. The premise was fun, and I liked the characters, but it was on and on one escape after another, too many unrealistic plot devices (would you really just let the bad guys escape over and over because you’re squeamish?), and far too much fantasy for my tastes. Also, this was much more violent than I expected, and I’m a little peeved that I let – no, encouraged – my son to read this last summer when he was 7 years old. This is more like the 12+ age group. I’m just glad he thought it was boring enough that he never read the rest of the series, despite my encouragement.

I think a book like this loses something in translation. The original is in German, and when I read it, it felt like a translation. Not that the words were wrong or anything, but it didn’t have that magic that an original has. I might have liked it better if I could read more than a handful of words in German.

So this was a disappointment, sadly. I really wanted to like it. I was hoping this would be another world I could wrap myself up in like Harry Potter’s world. But it wasn’t. I should have taken my son’s advice and skipped it. I don’t plan to read the others.