[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Delacorte Books for Young Readers in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Summary
The adventurers – Torgrim, Bran, Jandia, Mirak and Gerontius – are on a quest to find the pieces of an ancient scepter. They have secured six of the seven pieces, but the final battle seems impossible to win.
Ralph, Noel, JoJo, Persephone and Cammi have been playing Reign of Dragons for a couple years. Their original Game Master moved away so the kids have been taking turns planning the next part of their campaign for the pieces of the Seven Serpent Scepter. But as they’ve gotten older, everyone but Ralph seems to be drifting away from the game.
Ralph plans one final gaming day with his friends hoping to find the final piece of the scepter before the rest quit Reign of Dragons all together. But one roll of a golden d20 changes everything when their characters – Torgrim, Bram, Jandia, Mirak and Gerontius – are pulled from the game into the real world.
Review
This was SO fun! I’ve never played Dungeons and Dragons, but I know enough that I was able to follow along with the game play here. Kids who aren’t familiar with RPGs (Role Playing Games) may need a 5 minute tutorial about how the game works, but the rest of the story will make sense for everyone.
The characters in this – both the real life kids and their game counterparts – are terrific. It took me a little while to get all of them straight – which adventurer had which powers, which kid went with which character, etc. The kids are racially diverse (there’s a conversation about this when the kids explain that dynamic to the adventurers which is terrific) and one of the kids seems to be working through some things regarding his sexuality although it is fairly subtle. While these things round out the characters, they aren’t “issues” to be addressed in the story. These are just pieces of who the characters are. There are some fantastic moments when the kids really click with their game counterparts which was fun. The characters were my favorite part of this story.
This is a delightful fantasy book. The first 40% or so is set up – getting to know the kids, getting the history of their game play, and seeing the game characters in action. Then the game characters are pulled into our world. I loved seeing the adventurers trying to sort out our culture. And the connection between the game world and ours was handled in a clever way.
I highly recommend this book for kids who love fantasy and gaming and RPGs and the like. This was so fun!