Off the Bookshelf: SHADOWS OF THE LOST SUN, by Carrie Ryan and John Parke Davis

The Map to Everywhere, Book 3

This is a book I got from the library sale. Wish I'd seen BOOK 3 when I bought it .... because yeah, it's kind of hard to jump into a series that is ongoing without any warning ... until I opened to the title page.

Especially with such an involved, detailed world.

Full of adventure and punny names and gobs of past history and interesting characters.

Thank goodness there aren't a lot of characters, because that would have made diving into the story even harder.

Okay, our heroine is Marrill, a girl from our ordinary world, whose mother is sick. Not sure if she's in this magical world looking for help, or she just got pulled in.

There's Remy, who is referred to as the babysitter -- and the best babysitter in Arizona. But we're not in Arizona anymore, are we? She's training to help run the ship. Which is good, because the captain, Coll, runs into a huge problem along the way and Remy needs to take over.

Then there's the Naysayer -- the list at the front of the book says he's the quartermaster, but he's such a doom-and-gloom, you have to wonder if he does any good. 

Then there are the pirats -- yeah, you read that right, no e on the end. Rats, who seem to serve as the crew.

Then there's Ardent the wizard ... maybe the less said about him the better.

Then there's Fin, a Fade -- and it took a long time to figure out what a Fade is, but you learn right away that Marrill is the only one who remembers Fin from one second to the next. People have to keep being reminded he's there, and they keep wanting to throw him overboard as a stowaway. Or worse. Poor guy.

Everybody is out to find something, and they're working to deal with quests and dangers to the world, and there's the Pirate Stream they're sailing on, which appears to be magical and changes everything it touches. Except their boat, fortunately! And .... whew!!! No wonder it took me so dang long to get into the story, just figuring out who is what is where and why and ...

And kids are supposed to read this? I'm an adult and had a hard time holding onto things.

Which means this is major fun, and eventually I'm going to have to get Book 1 and Book 2 just to figure out how things got started ... and yeah, there's at least a Book 4, because the ending of Book 3 was rather ... depressing, confusing, but touched with hope.

Whew!