Keeper of the Lost Cities Plot

Sophie is not a normal 13 year old, she has the power of telepathy and can always hear everyone’s thoughts. To go along with that, she’s extremely smart, and has a photographic memory. She’s an outsider because of all of those things. Then, she sees a boy, on a class field trip, who just looks too pretty. And he is looking at her, something feels off and she talked to him.

Turns out that something is off about her life. Fitz, the boy, tells her that she isn’t a normal human, in fact, she isn’t a human at all. There is a secret world of elves and other magical and mythical creatures out there. In our own world, but just out of sight due to magic. But her life as a human will need to go away if she is going to be an elf and live the life that she’s supposed to.

More Details and Harry Potter Comparison

So I don’t want to go into much more. What I wrote is basically the back blurb on the cover, but it’s something that should wet your appetite. And don’t worry, Keeper of the Lost Cities is not another Harry Potter. There are elements that might feel similar. The main character integrates into a new world that they didn’t know existed.

And to continue that comparison, she is a bit of a chosen child, but not in the way that Harry Potter is. I think that chosen child comparison is something people will latch onto, but Shannon Messenger does a better job of writing a chosen child. Sophie is really behind for an elf. She doesn’t know the world, she is expected to know and catch-up to what she doesn’t know. When she gets stuff wrong, elves are disappointed.

Harry Potter constantly should be in trouble, and he is not. Sophie often should be in trouble, and when she is, she gets punished. Her life has many more real elements to it. Characters worry about her. They pester her. They bug her, stuff that you don’t see happen in Harry Potter. People either hate Harry or love Harry, there is nothing between the two. For Sophie, people look to use her, to befriend her because of who she is, avoid her, and expect everything from her. And she is trying to balance all of that.

What Doesn’t Work?

There is very little, if anything that doesn’t work. I should talk about book 8.5 here. Mainly because that might be something that won’t work for some people. Even for me, I found it fairly boring. The point of book 8.5 is that it’s a bit of a recap for everything that has happened. Plus a novella that tells some story where book 8 left off and where book 9 begins. Or at least I am assuming that.

If you read the series in a compressed period of time, most book 8.5 is unneeded. I know what the characters did recently. I don’t need a full recap, no matter what way it is written. And some of the sections are better written than others. It is more the authors notes turned into something in the world that you are reading through.

I don’t even mind that they exist. I mind that there is a pretty important feeling novella in the book. It is different than she could write for the main book. The main books only show Sophie’s perspective. The novella bounces between perspectives. But to get the novella, you get the whole book. And I say now, get the book, just read the novella.

What Works?

Characters

So much works in this series. Sophie is a believable main character and the side characters are strong as well. Often in Middle Grade or Young Adult books, the main character is a paper cutout of a character. It is meant for the reader to put themselves into their shoes. Sophie is not that. She is a fully realized and deeply developed character. And each of the side characters at least the core, are as realized as she is.

I fail to think of many series where this is the case. Especially in that grade range. And I think there should be more. The story is easily digestible for an adult. And while there are intense moments for maybe middle grade reader, it is going to be pull them in.

Story Depth and Intensity

And let’s talk about the intensity. The story, unlike others in it’s age range, isn’t shy about bad things happening. And not like they happen around Sophie. Some of them do happen to other people. And it is character development for those characters. And reasons that friendships become stronger. But often the bad is directed to Sophie. She is not given an easy life. She is not a hero who always steps in and saves the day.

In fact, most of the time, she needs to rely on others to help her. Does she lead, for sure, she is the chosen one after all. But it isn’t a situation where she can do it alone. And that is a struggle for her. To compare her to another fictional character, it is a lot like how Harry Dresden, in the Dresden Files, is always looking to do stuff himself. He does so because he doesn’t want others to get hurt. Sophie is the same way.

World Building and Themes

Shannon Messenger is very good about building out her world. It helps that some of it is our world. But the rest of it, with the elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, and more is different. But it is still similar. I think it is worked well like good fantasy or sci-fi. It is different enough that you feel like it isn’t our world, but close enough that it can touch on themes and issues that are true for us our world as well.

And I think that is another thing Messenger does well, also. She tells a good story with items that ring true. Now, it is still middle grade, so the depth of an issue isn’t always there. But that is okay, she is writing through the eyes of a 13-15 year old. Sophie is not going to understand everything, so as a reader, our view of these issues in the story should be simpler.

At the same time, I talk about the intensity of the story. And that means that as an older reader of the series, I understand some things that Sophie doesn’t. The story ages up well, that way. It makes the young reader start to think and the older reader understand the depth that is there.

Who is Keeper of the Lost Cities For?

I think that the young end would be twelve for the series. Though you maybe could go younger just reading it aloud and talking about what is going on. But that depends obviously on how you spend time. I don’t want to assume that people do a story that way. But twelve or thirteen is when I’d say a kid would be up for reading it.

As for getting older, it depends. I think a lot of people around my age and younger so mid-thirties and younger. The story is familiar. It feels a bit like Harry Potter, but in my opinion better. And my generation and younger, we read Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight, Divergent, Maze Runner and more. Keeper of the Lost Cities contains all of that and more.

Final Thoughts

I love this series. I am reading a few other things right now, but I fully expect to come back to the series and read it all again. And I already pre-ordered the next book in the series. I want to know what is going to come next, and I want to spend more time with these characters in that world.

I really believe that a lot of people are going to enjoy this series as well. Like I said, the story is different, more meaningful than things it feels similar to. Yet it will hit the same beats that you expect from a Middle Grade or Young Adult series and novels. Plus there is a lot to the story, just in terms of how long the story is.

Have you read Keeper of the Lost Cities?

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This is building off of my articles on where to start in comics and the article on zombies in pop culture. The format is going to continue to be a little bit different every time, mainly because it can be, but I want to talk about some things that have worked well and some that don’t work as well.

I think that we can all think of a lot of apocalyptic or post apocalyptic stories out there. About 5 years ago we had a lot of them being taken on in the Young Adult style with books series like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Maze Runner. Some of these worked better and some were disappointments, at least for myself. Since then, the genre hasn’t really died off, we have Netflix putting out shows like Daybreak and The Rain where things are going horribly wrong or have gone horribly wrong in the world. The genre as a whole has kind of been all over the map though with a lot of goofy stories as well as many very serious takes on the genre as well.

Now, I’m not sure that any particular take is going to be always the right one. Some that take themselves too seriously become overwrought and melodramatic, while others can try and do a humorous take on it that just ends up being hit or miss. And there’s also an element where some authors are trying too hard to be profound on a topic that is going to lend itself to a lot of speculation.

Just to talk about speculation, I feel like there are two that I can kind of compare as to how one does it decently and the other does it poorly. In The Hunger Games, we have this idea of spectacle, and that humans, even when things are going poorly are going to want spectacle and probably even want more and greater spectacle, especially if they are at the top of the food chain. This is something that we can see already in our society where people love things like Survivor, or even before our time with the shows in the Roman Colosseum, so The Hunger Games has a feeling of something that is grounded and truthful to it. Compare that to Divergent. The issue with Divergent, besides that the story just takes a left turn that everyone saw coming is that they split up humanity and society in a way that doesn’t make any sense. At no point in time before has society split itself along those lines in such a way or tested people so that they would be split that way. It feels like an illogical jump for a society to make and one that doesn’t really aid the society in the long run. So even though, I would say, there is some overlap, the speculation and the ability for a post apocalyptic story to have a ring of truth to it makes a big difference.

Now, I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about how it’s moved into other mediums. It’s easy to think of books, films and TV shows, but in many ways it’s just as easy to think of video games. The Last of Us is a prime example of a post-apocalyptic game, and the Resident Evil games take place during or after the apocalypse. But probably less known to some, though obviously something I like, is how it’s made it’s way into board games. Pandemic Legacy Season 1 and Season 2 are basically board games about the apocalypse and the fallout from that. And it gives you an interestingly written story. Even a game like Dead of Winter, which I’ve mentioned in the zombie article, is definitely about survival after the apocalypse. While I don’t have a ton of post-apocalyptic games on my shelf, I have a lot that are about thwarting that great disaster from happening, basically all of the Lovecraft Mythos investigative games from Fantasy Flight fall into that category. In those games, Arkham Horror, Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition, Eldritch Horror, Elder Signs, you’re always trying to stop a great old one from coming through, or something along those lines. Even fantasy games like Gloomhaven, Sword & Sorcery, and Aeon’s End: War Eternal, while maybe not as heavily apocalyptic as some, have bits and pieces of that thrown in, especially if you fail the campaign.

Finally, there are RPG’s, and I think when it comes to a medium that is built for the apocalypse, RPG’s are that medium. Even if it hasn’t happened, the fact that you’re going on an adventure to do something, it’s going to be to stop something bad, and generally that’s some form the of the apocalypse for at least part of the world. And if you make it up to level 20, it’s probably for the whole world. In fact, one of the campaign books for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition is Princes of the Apocalypse. There’s just something about the story of an malevolent god trying to destroy humanity and the player characters becoming humanities champions that just works well for a story. It’s one of those things where you can joke that it’s a story as old as time, but it works for so many reasons as it gives you that heroes journey and that final thing for them to overcome.

Well, that was kind of rambling, I had a lot that I wanted to talk about what I like from apocalyptic stories and why some of them don’t work as well if they ring a little hollow. Plus, I couldn’t go an article without talking about how it has flowed into the RPG and Board Game mediums. What are some of your favorite apocalyptic stories from whatever medium it might be?

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