Vailia's Page Turner

Here, There Be Dragons focuses on a group of travelers that start off in London and take a voyage to a place called the Archipelago of Dreams. A 'world' of different islands, races and people. There are three from out world as we know it. John, Jack and Charles. They are told by a man named Bert (another primary character) that they are to be Caretakers of a map called the Imaginarium Geographica. Also in this story is Aven, Bert's daughter and ship captain, and Bug, a youth they meet at their first stop and who tags along as a stowaway and wants to be a knight. Together, these travelers set out to restore order to the Archipelago and to stop the Winter King (the evil tyrant of the story) from taking over and turning everything and everybody to shadow. This story had me wavering. The story seems to copy a lot from other stories, books and characters (both fiction and non). Sometimes this bothered me, however, much of the reasoning for this is explained at the end and actually gave me a bit better an impression for the book. Plus James A Owen does mention and give credit to some of these after the story is over. This turned out to be a fun adventure/fantasy story. Not a great novel but enjoyable nonetheless. I hope to be able to continue the series in the future.