YOUNG ADULT REVIEW: The Indigo King - James Owen

BOOK BLURB:

On a September evening in 1931, John and Jack, two of the Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica, discover a plea for help on an ancient medieval parchment. It seems to have been written by their friend, Hugo Dyson! But when they rush to warn him, they find that Hugo has already been abducted by fierce creatures called the Un-Men, who have mistaken him for the third Caretaker, Charles. And in that moment, the world begins to change...The Frontier which separates our world from the Archipelago of Dreams has fallen. Dark and terrible beasts roam throughout England. No one can be summoned from the Archipelago. And worse, their mentor and ally Bert seems to have forgotten them entirely! The only hope of restoring order from the chaos lies on a forgotten island - where a time travel device left by Jules Verne must be used to race through history itself - from the Bronze Age, to the fall of Troy and the founding of the Silver Throne. And in that single night, John and Jack discover that the only way to save their friend and stop the chaos destroying the world is to solve a two-thousand year-old mystery: Who is the Cartographer?


REVIEW:

I’ve absolutely loved this series by James Owen since its original release so when a new offering lands, you can be pretty damn sure that it flies to the top of my TBR pile. Here the characters seek to put right what’s gone wrong and whilst favourite characters from children’s tales abound, it’s the novel way that James blends them, along with authors of our own time that makes this series so compelling. Never one to miss a trick this really is a series for the YA reader with twists and turns and powerful characters that will speak to the YA psyche.