RING AND IRON

A daring boy once more travels to a magical realm through a secret doorway in this third installment of a middle-grade adventure series.

Eleven-year-old Hunter Wilson has just returned from an escapade with pirates on a fantastical world. He’s brought back a sword, a wand, and gold pieces as souvenirs. And while he left home through a puddle—acting as a magical Door—he returned from the realm in a neighbor’s house. Now, Hunter is grounded for two weeks. As he curbs his reckless behavior and improves his grades, he misses the excitement and Murphy, the giant dog he befriended on the Door’s other side. He remains on the lookout for another Door, knowing that an evil king sealed them. With his grounding nearly over, Hunter visits his friends Gertrude Clemmons and David Kim. On the way home from Gert’s house, he finds a ring of toadstools. Stepping into the ring causes it to spin. Hunter is transported into the presence of the Elder Folk, or fae, including elves, gnomes, and pixies. They wonder if he’s the legendary Dark Child, seeing in his possession a wand of rowan and an iron sword once belonging to “the Great King of Albion.” Hunter eventually meets King Oberon and Queen Titania, who rule the fae court. Can he find a way to reopen all the Doors between realms? Genzano’s latest Stranger World outing gives readers another genre to dive into, this time traditional fantasy. In his long, descriptive passages are evocative lines: “One tower rose up on a twisting spindle that looked as thin as a flower stem, and then blossomed into a gigantic curving pile of heavy stone.” But sometimes the author assumes his young audience’s familiarity with the classics, mentioning the “Eye of Sauron” from The Lord of the Rings series with no explanation. A larger story is seeded with the appearance of Esthuan Thievesbane, an emissary of the king in the Fortress in the Sky, who’s imprisoned by the fae. The brief chapters about her hint that war may be coming to the Stranger World universe, along with a welcome rise in stakes.

An entertaining fantasy that prepares readers for more tumultuous series installments.