Beyonders trilogy ~ 3 stars

     The Beyonders trilogy, by Brandon Mull, is a story of action, adventure, and courage set in a fantastical world pulled straight from the imagination of the author of the wonderful Fablehaven series. It's one of those books where a kid from our world travels to another place and finds himself the answer to prophecy. That's what Jason is: the answer to a prophecy, the hero who could save the world of Lyrian or destroy it. But he's also just an ordinary, baseball-loving teenager and at heart he's just like every one else.

     Jason comes from the Beyond - that would be our world - and his sudden arrival in a place nothing like Earth couldn't be more startling to him. Lyrian is a place like no other - you won't find another book with a world like Lyrian, and around every corner you're discovering something new about it. It's populated by humans, yes, but there are strange races living there, too, races created years ago by wizards. The food is exotic and varied, and the places Jason adventures to are as diverse as a swampy jungle full of huge frogs to the Tavern-Go-Round, a spinning tavern. All these things provide the backdrop for the story Brandon Mull has prepared.

     Jason, together with Rachel, another teen who has traveled from our world to Lyrian, are set on a quest by the Blind King to find the syllables to a magical world that can destroy the evil, tyrannical wizard Maldor, who seeks to conquer and control the entire world of Lyrian and everyone and everything in it. This quest will be dangerous enough, but no less dangerous than confronting Maldor in his fortress and speaking the word that will save Lyrian. And because of the nature of this series, I can't tell you what happens beyond that. You'll have to read them to find out.

     Now, with this fairly glowing description, maybe you're wondering why I'm only giving this series 3 stars. Here's why.

     In Lyrian, Brandon Mull created an amazingly detailed, intricate, unique world, filled with things and creatures I'd never heard of before, including wizard-born races that you will not find the like of in any fantasy novel you've ever read. Usually that's a good thing. I like to find unique worlds in books, but in Beyonders there was just too much for me to handle. I got lost in all the imagery - and not in a good way. There was so much going on in the background that I had a difficult time following the thread of the story with all these strange names of creatures and things popping up every few pages.

     Secondly, I had problems with the cast of characters in the Beyonders. As far as creating unique characters, Brandon Mull did well, especially with his wizard-born races to draw from. I do have a certain attachment to Ferrin the displacer, and I dare you to read the whole trilogy and hate him. Jason and Rachel were also great people, and the Blind King was...blind, of course, but pretty awesome. The problem for me was that there were other people who would join Jason and Rachel as they set off on each new quest, not so much in the first book, but definitely in the other two. And there were SO MANY of them, each with such a special skill-set that whenever they ran into trouble - and they did - there was always someone perfectly equipped to save their necks.

     Now, having a large cast of characters meant that Brandon Mull could regularly kill a few to remind Jason and Rachel to keep moving, but I find that creating characters and adding them to the story for a bit-part before killing them as a casual reminder isn't a mark of good writing. So between the jack-of-all-trades aspect of Jason and Rachel's ever-growing group of questers and their frequent, sudden deaths just to prove a point, I found the story lacking something. I couldn't get genuinely attached to the characters when I knew they'd be dead in 150 pages or so, only to be replaced by someone just as good or better. 

     Those are my reasons for rating the Beyonders the way I do. Despite having a brilliantly imagined world and a story premise that I loved, technicalities in how the author executed the story just didn't live up to my standards. However, there are lots and lots of people who had loved these books to an insane degree. I've read the reviews on Amazon, and there are fans out there as diehard as any fans of Harry Potter. So if you did like Fablehaven, I think the Beyonders might be worth looking into. It just didn't work for me.

     To sum up my somewhat extended review, let me just say that the first book of this trilogy has already been reviewed on Under Cover Agents by Mountain Gal, my blogging buddy. Check out her review HERE, and hopefully between us we can give a less biased assessment of these books.

Link to author website: http://brandonmull.com/site/beyonders-books