A green blob and five teens are secretly protecting the world. Unfortunately, things change fast and it’s unclear what’s happening. Our five young friends willingly join the Torchbearers, which is an old tradition of people who protect the past, the future, and another dimension to boot. These five have a steep learning curve ahead of them. When secret and strange creatures from another multi-verse attack their home town, they leap into action. Even when things are at their worst, they are determined to stick together and do the right thing. Saving their home town of Timbers is their priority. Unfortunately, they have to hide it all from their parents but they are still careful to meet all their other “kid” obligations.
This high-stake game of multi-verse cat and mouse might be good for anybody looking to read an action adventure with fantastic details. Although there are scary creatures in this story, the authors have done an amazing job keeping the story pretty light-hearted with no gory or super scary details, keeping it age appropriate for their targeted audience. In this epic story, it’s the characters who make the story so remarkable. They are dealing with fears and aspirations just as we might expect other people to deal with. Although this is book two, it stands alone well making it unnecessary to read book one, The Darkdeep, to get a good understanding of the back story. However, book one was also quite good and is worth the journey. The ending of The Beast comes to a good conclusion and also sets it up for book three, which I look forward to reading.
Review of an Advance Reading Copy
This book was sent to Compass Book Ratings for review by Bloomsbury Children’s Books
Content Analysis:
Profanity/Language: None
Violence/Gore: Many chapters about scary creatures escaping and trying to harm and scare people, no physical harm; a large beast tries to attack five young teens but ultimately no injury, fire involved; the five young teens often pull out knives to defend themselves, no harm inflicted on others; the five young teens are locked in a flooding room; one young teen is almost drowned but survives with no physical harm; a creature is kept in a container for many years and not allowed to go home; an epic battle between creatures, some description of the fight but no gory details.
Sex/Nudity: A young teen boy removes his pants before diving into deep water, no description of nudity, just embarrassed girls.
Mature Subject Matter:
Police evasion, scary beasts, fire, flooding.
Alcohol / Drug Use:
None
