Book Review: Here There Be Dragons by James A. Owen

I'm a little ashamed that it's been 2 years since my welcome post... I think I had grand ideas of regular writing, and let's face it. As a squirrely, homeschooling mom of four, I don't do anything regular. If anything, consistency is something I am consistently working on. Only this year, after 15 years of parenting, have I gotten back into a regular, daily rhythm of personal devotions after years of scatterbrained and sporadic times. So blogging falls very low on my list of things to do.

Thankfully, I have an encouraging friend. Everyone needs one of those. A dear sister in Christ who is encouraging me to write again.

So here I am. Why don't we start with something easy? A book review. Because as close friends know, I could talk books all the day long and find kindred spirits in unexpected people.

A few prior warnings to my book reviews:

1. We read up. Meaning, our oldest (J) is a teenager and our youngest (B2) is a year away from tweenage. While we don't read adult novels, we read at J's level often. We revisit old favorites like My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett because we don't want B2 to grow up without them. But for the most part, our new reads are for all to enjoy (dad and mom included). We also read up to grow them. I read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott with B1 before she could fully understand everything. And that made for rule #2.

2. We discuss everything. While we strive to give our kids clean material to read, we don't always pre-read. And for those who gasped, let me explain. My kids read voraciously. I can't keep up. So they know our standards are God's standards. They have grown, by God's grace and mercy, to trust my husband and I and lean on the standard we live by. I know this because they've come to me with inappropriate books that got brought home from the library. And it lives in the library bag until next time we go, no fuss or questions. It could have a bad picture we weren't expecting (sadly this has ruined many a good book series, like one single nude picture in The Wondla Trilogy by Tony Diterlizzi. Thankfully I had pre-read those ones. She's covered, but barely). It could have an agenda that goes against Scripture (I'm looking at you, Wings of Fire by Tui Sutherland. Books 1-5 were rockstars, and then you subtly brought in 2 moms and boys liking boys in 6-10. So sad). Satan is subtle, friends. Prowling like a roaring lion. So we have discussions in our house. Not every book is gonna be perfect, and not every book deserves to go in the library bag. So we discuss, bringing back all things to the standard of God's word. You'll see that in this post.

3. If you read below, there will be spoilers. I'll try my best to keep the best parts a surprise, but in order to let you know a head's up on things you might need to know, I might need to tell you details. You've been warned...

Now that THAT is cleared up... Onto the actual review you clicked on this for.

Here There Be Dragons 

James A. Owen (author and illustrator)

Book Image from his website: https://jamesaowen.com/

Age Range for Readers: Amazon says grades 7-9 or age 12+

Find it here at: Here There Be Dragons (The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica: Book 1)

Review: 💛💛💛 out of 5

Storyline from Amazon:

"An unusual murder brings together three strangers, John, Jack, and Charles, on a rainy night in London during the first World War. An eccentric little man called Bert tells them that they are now the caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica -- an atlas of all the lands that have ever existed in myth and legend, fable and fairy tale. These lands, Bert claims, can be traveled to in his ship the Indigo Dragon, one of only seven vessels that is able to cross the Frontier between worlds into the Archipelago of Dreams.

Pursued by strange and terrifying creatures, the companions flee London aboard the Dragonship. Traveling to the very realm of the imagination itself, they must learn to overcome their fears and trust in one another if they are to defeat the dark forces that threaten the destiny of two worlds. And in the process, they will share a great adventure filled with clues that lead readers to the surprise revelation of the legendary storytellers these men will one day become.

An extraordinary journey of myth, magic, and mystery, Here, There Be Dragons introduces James A. Owen as a formidable new talent."

I'll start with we really liked this book. It was exciting and if you are a family who loves literature, a true treat as the author weaves together some of the greatest books in fiction into a story. While this is NOT a true story (pure fiction), it has many real people and their true characters in real life are built upon in the fantasy world. All of which I found delightful. 

Yet it was darker then I expected. A friend told me our family would like it because it had dragons and lots of literary references. While nothing is graphic in details, the beginning is very intense from the get-go with evil chasing the main characters down and lurking around corners. I would not recommend this for ages younger than 10. Again, we read up. So my 9 year old, who is brass and bold, was fine. But if I had read that when J (our oldest) was 10 and everyone else was younger, I think I would have been cuddling kids having nightmares and stopped not even halfway through the first chapter. The story opens with John meeting Jack and Charles at the murder scene of a mutual acquaintance. John was the professor's student, Charles was the professor's editor, and Jack was simply a messenger bringing him something. In that moment, they are roped into the action, and it's all hands on deck from there. They have evil creatures pursuing them for something given to them by the professor, and along with Bert, who rescues them, they are whisked into the magical land of the Archipelago of Dreams. The three men become the new caretakers of the sole map to the Archipelago, the Imaginarium Geographica, and are called upon to save the magical world from a war, where repercussions are felt in our own world in the Great War (WWI).

There's battle scenes, difficulties, and warning, a few uses of "Damn" (meaning oh no) and I believe only one "Ass" (meaning stupid like a donkey), because they are English. You really can't escape those curse words with the English, even in the beloved The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. If you read aloud like we do, you can skip over them with a clean exclamation. If you were listening on audiobook like we were for this, it's unavoidable. Sadly, the Lord's name was taken in vain once or twice by Charles. So there is a bit of language to take into account when deciding if this is right for your family.

But for the most part, it's just action, figuring out puzzles and riddles, and beating the bad guys, as well as showing a truly marvelous reason why people should learn ancient languages. It's an adventure in itself as the 3 translate the Geographica in order to save the world. John, unbeknownst to him, has been trained for this with the professor. He knows Latin, Greek, Hebrew, as well as Italian, Spanish, German, and other languages, allowing him to read and figure out the Geograhica. Being a lover of many languages, I thoroughly enjoyed that. It's like a decoding a mystery.

But I would honestly say our biggest discussions as a family were in the middle and towards the end. The first was when we met Ordo Maas in the book. He is supposed to be Noah. And while his tale lines up for some time with the Genesis narrative, it veers off in a false direction about creation and the flood that left all of us giving a disparaging sigh. Fiction is great until it tries to mess with and twist Scripture. I wish Owen would have left this side plot alone completely, or just have made Ordo Maas the oldest man in the Archipelago without any reference to Scripture. So we discussed truth vs. lie in this part. What about Ordo Maas's story of the creation and the flood are true? We compared the stories in discussion. How do we know the flood narrative and creation narrative are true? Because they are in the bible. Why can we trust what the bible says? Because it is the inspired word of God, the One who made heaven and earth. He is not a falsehood. We see that in His detailed creation, in how the Old Testament prophecies came true in Christ Jesus. Having visited the Ark Encounter in KY not that long ago, we discussed other flood narratives and how all cultures have one, which also points to the fact that there must have been one, but why those narratives had to be false based on logic. So that was problem #1 and its discussion.

The other was towards the end. We have a running joke, started thanks to watching old Disney movies, that anyone who has to believe in themselves and follow their hearts needs to stop that and believe in the true God. Our kids will often call out to the movie or audiobook, "Believe in Jesus! Not in you!" At one point in the book, John is quite discouraged, and his friends aren't helping. He ends up having an important talk. I won't say with whom because that would ruin a surprise. But he is told that he needs to believe in himself. The backseat of our van began to call out the usual "tut tuts". But I paused it. We talked about the difference between belief and confidence. Because John did need to learn to have confidence. He was a bit cowardly and unsure of himself even though he had the skills needed. He needed to learn to step up. And what the person was telling him when he said "believe in you, because I do" was to step up, take charge, and fight. We discussed if that was wrong or right. It is good to have gumption it was decided, but his trust and rest needs to be in the Lord to have true courage. I got to share with them that the real John (who you'll find out later who that is if you read it) did trust in God, and got his courage from him to go on to do many marvelous things. Which is always a delightful thing.

This isn't to say we didn't stop and discuss other things, or that our discussions are always negative. They are meant to let our kids know they can talk with us about anything, and that everything needs to be brought back to the Word of God for study like the Bereans in Acts 17:10-15. This grows our standard into something more steady, makes ready our shields of faith, and helps put out the flaming darts of the Evil One before they take root in our kids. We are not pelle-melle with books and media, allowing anything into our home. But we are vigilant in what is coming into their brains and hearts. Some books are banished willingly by our kids with understanding that it wasn't good for their souls before my husband and I ever opened it. This is why we discuss things.

I gave it 3 hearts out of 5 because while these were big discussions for our family, they were not huge in the storyline. They were small side moments. The rest of the story could have continued without them or with them altered. The rest of the book was exciting, fun, and gave constant reminiscences of old reads we loved, especially the Chronicles of Prydain by Llyod Alexander. You might want to read that before reading this because he referenced it A LOT. That series is an easy 4 💛 out 5, with no cursing, no Scripture twisting, and so much adventure. Ages 10+ (only because sometimes if longer narratives are new to them, it's hard to understand what's going on). If you don't leave it calling food "crunchings and munchings" for at least a few days, you might have read it wrong.

So will you read Here There Be Dragons? If you do, let me know if you guessed the caretakers' true identities before they were revealed at the end. I'm on book 2 by myself. It got darker in the 2nd book, so it's a no-go as a family read, but it's still clean fiction for adult reading, which is hard to find. I don't know if I would allow my 15 year old to read it. Charles's character is a bit more full of those words I mentioned before, and the storyline is much creepier. It's still a tapestry of stories, but maybe too spooky for kids under 17. Then again, J loves Grimm's Fairytales, which isn't far from it all... We'll see.

Is there a book you're wondering about? Leave a comment!