THE CRAFTER

A boy moves to a new town and plays a game that brings him to a magical realm in Sugralinov’s middle-grade fantasy series starter.

When Kenny, who’s about to enter the sixth grade, and his mom move from New York City to Stonewood, Kansas,his most pressing concern is whether his father will meet them at the airport. If his dad shows up, he thinks, things will go “back to the way they were.” When he doesn’t, Kenny realizes that things won’t ever be the same. In Kansas, Kenny’s mom enrolls him at school but then leaves him home alone while she starts her new job. Curious about a mysterious gaming console at the new apartment, he presses the start button and finds himself magically transported into an unknown role-playing game. Sugralinov presents a work in the RealRPG genre, which offers a literary version of a role-playing game; when Kenny’s in the game world, large swaths of text feature player directives, descriptions of tools and adversaries, and statistics such as skill points and power percentages. RPG enthusiasts will be accustomed to this, but others may skim through these sections, as they initially seem insignificant to Kenny’s personal development and it’s unclear how the two worlds are connected. However, during his first day of play, Kenny learns that he can understand his cat’s meows, that real-world time stops while he’s in the game, and that certain improvements in his game life become present in the real world. The protagonist expresses weighty concerns involving his father: “After Dad left, Mom’s laughter had faded. She used to have the best kind of laugh—the kind that lit up her eyes and made everyone else smile. And then one day, Dad was just gone.” However, he doesn’t explore them, either in connection with the game or otherwise, which deprives the story of an anchoring purpose. That said, Kenny’s progress and discoveries in the game world, especially after friends join him on his quest, promise an intriguing continuing series.

An adventurous tale of a boy entering a fantasy world that’s hampered by inconsistent character development.