Rise of the Wyrm Lord: The Door Within Trilogy - Book Two
Grade 6-8–The sequel toThe Door Within(Tommy Nelson, 2005) opens a few weeks after Aidan Thomas has returned from the kingdom of Alleble, located in The Realm, where he trained to be a knight to fight the minions of the evil Paragor the Betrayer, King Eliam's nemesis. He meets Antoinette Reed, a classmate who also has knowledge of The Realm. This time, the plot turns on her adventures as she travels from Alleble to Yewland to convince the queen to align herself with King Eliam and discover whether Paragor has awakened the Wyrm Lord as a weapon against Alleble. However, Antoinette's task is somewhat muddled by Aidan's entreaty for her to find his friend's Glimpse and convince him to turn away from Paragor. There are some good imaginative elements here, but the Christian allegory is heavy-handed and unwieldy: science and logic are incompatible with faith and belief, and much emphasis is placed upon whether or not the people of Earth actively believe in the stories of Alleble (and therefore, ensure their salvation) without the compelling Gospel counterparts. The dialogue is much improved from the first book, but it still clunks along in parts where contemporary dialect is invoked. An additional purchase for collections that are in need of more fantasy trilogies.–Farida S. Dowler, Mercer Island Library, WACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.