A review by halthemonarch
The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens

4.0

This review isn’t going to be as long as some of the others I’ve written because this book isn’t excessively deep. I enjoyed it and I think I would have been obsessed with it if I read it while I was still the target demographic. The Emerald Atlas is a heartwarming story about family and a thrilling children’s fantasy about time travel all rolled into one, with a premise that is both sound and sounds developed enough for the two subsequent books. We follow Kate, Michael, and Emma three unextrordinary orphans who find out there’s more to the world than they’d previously thought; and after the perils of this book our heroes find our that their parents are prisoners of an extremely powerful entity that’s after the key to all magic. Again, sound and interesting!

I wish I hadn’t consumed so much media that features time travel because I wasn’t surprised at any of the twists. Which isn’t a bad thing! There were bread crumbs all the time to lead to the conclusions being drawn by the various characters, and the fact that we saw the whole thing largely through Michael, Kate, and Emma, it was localized enough not to be confusing. The whole thing flowed and was captivating from the first, and it was all brought alive by my favorite narrator, Jim Dale. If I ever meet any middle school book-heads, I’ll be sure to keep this recommendation in my back pocket.