Review: This was an awesome story and can't wait for more!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 31, 2013
People are disappearing; more specifically men between the ages of 15 and 55.  They aren't just wandering away or getting lost, kidnapped or murdered.  Their entire bodies are disappearing into a whiff of smoke, leaving only their clothes behind.  No one knows where they are going or if they are coming back.  But 17 year old Deacon McTaggart's mom has decided that she isn't going to take any chances with him disappearing.  She has decided to send him to his uncle Evon's home in Scotland.  Evon has promised that he can keep Deacon safe and keep him from disappearing.  Deacon heads to Scotland and is completely surprised and overwhelmed by what he finds there.  His Uncle Evon has told him that the people are disappearing from Earth and he believes that they are going to the "other" world called Avalon, where Evon and Deacon are from.  Evon tells Deacon some stories of Avalon and the creatures & people that live there.  Deacon doesn't know whether to believe him or not, but when he finds himself accidentally in Avalon, all alone, he starts believing that maybe the stories his uncle was telling weren't induced by the strange brew called Meadale that his uncle had been drinking.I absolutely loved this book!  I really enjoyed the story and learning about this other world called Avalon.  The story is completely different than any other stories that I have read and has some amazing ideas in it.  I loved all of the characters.  There are fairies, dragons, giants, trolls (Trulls), vampires, you name it!  The storytelling was very vivid and it grabbed me and wouldn't let go.  I read it in one day and then turned to the 2nd book because of course, it is a cliffhanger.There were only a few problems that I had with this book and I think they could be blamed on the formatting for the Kindle.  There were punctuation issues that would be hard to believe that were done on purpose.  For instance, instead of using an apostrophe in a contraction, an quote mark was used instead:  can"t instead of can't.  Also, there were weird things happening with the quotes.  I don't think I can demonstrate how it looked on here because I have no idea how to even make it happen.  I will just describe it as this:  for the beginning quote mark, a "lower" quotation mark was used (like a double comma in front of the word) and the end quote was a normal end quote mark.  Huh??  How do you do that?  Anyway, no other issues with the book with the exception of some very minor grammatical things.I highly recommend this book to any young adult, adult, fiction, fantasy, dystopian (or whatever you want to call it) reader.  There are a few minor curse words, no sex, some violence, but nothing grotesque or homicidal.  I was explaining the book to my husband and my 7 year old and they both thought it sounded good.  Justin Osborne is a great storyteller and definitely has an overactive imagination!  I cannot even begin to fathom how he came up with this idea or any of the ideas/names, etc in this story.  I cannot wait until Book 3 comes out!!