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Max Sumner and his three best friends, Harley, Ernie, and Natalia--who form the secret club The Grey Griffins--seem to be the only people in their very normal Minnesota town to notice that strange things have started to happen. When creatures like goblins and fairies and unicorns, all characters from a card game the Grey Griffins play, begin to make appearances in Max's backyard, Max and his friends know something is terribly wrong. And it's up to them to stop the wicked creatures of the cards from destroying their town-indeed, their world.
- Sales Rank: #5092061 in Books
- Published on: 2006-05-01
- Formats: Audiobook, CD
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 9
- Dimensions: 6.42" h x 1.04" w x 6.38" l, .64 pounds
- Running time: 37500 seconds
- Binding: Hardcover
From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8–Weird things are happening in tiny Avalon, Minnesota in this predictable novel by Derek Benz (Orchard, 2006). Goblins, fairies, and unicorns have begun to appear to Max Summer and his fellow Grey Griffin Club members. The Grey Griffins and the elderly proprietor of the Shoppe of Antiquities participate in a role-playing card game involving characters from Arthurian legend. Max and his friends seem to be the only people in town who realize that the characters have come to life. Its up to the Grey Griffins, with help from a few adults, to save the world from the evil that has been unleashed. The dialogue is mind-numbingly dull, and even narrator Erik Steele has a difficult time bringing the characters to life. The main characters are stereotypically the rich kid, the tough kid, the whiny kid, and the smart girl. The plot is more Scooby-Doo than fantasy.–Tricia Melgaard, Centennial Middle School, Broken Arrow, OK
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"The Revenge of the Shadow King has all the ingredients that make for great fantasy.� I was hooked from the first page."� Jenny Nimmo,� author of the New York Times bestselling Charlie Bone books.
A collectible card game introduces Max and his friends to the battle against ancient evil in this undistinguished but entertaining series opener. Grandfatherly shopkeeper Iver has sold the four a rare card game in which they fight goblins, faeries and the powerful Shadow King. It's only a game at first, but soon their town of Avalon, Minn. is plagued with horrors. Max finds a magical book, real goblins attack and Iver vanishes. Along with spunky Natalia, poor Harley and cowardly Ernie, Max determines to defeat the Shadow King. Luckily, he's the one true heir to powerful magical ability, born to make a stand in the age-old fight against evil-perhaps in the Gothic temple in town, built by Templars 500 years before Europeans came to the New World. Constant danger and some humor keep this adventure moving despite clunky prose.� Not a bad option for fans of the genre. (Fantasy. 9-12) First printing of 50,000 (Kirkus Review)
About the Author
Born in the wrong place, and unquestionably the wrong time, Derek spent most of his early years trying to figure out where he was and why he was different than everyone else. By the age of five, he had stumbled upon the answer: the rest of humanity was really nothing more than an elaborate hoax of cleverly disguised robots, and he was the only real human among them. Having overcome that mystery, he set out with other young members of the Grey Griffins (a super-secret club) to protect the world from darkness and bring about a better world through friendship, wit, and superbly-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
He's climbed volcanoes in the Ring of Fire, fished for sharks in the North Atlantic, scandalized the Cathedral of Barcelona, been mauled by an angry kitten off the coast of Turkey, narrowly avoided being blown up outside Belfast, learned the meaning of defenestration in France, and even jumped off a few cliffs in Greece. His interests spanned a wide spectrum: archaeology, linguistics, mythology, cosmology, conspiracy theory, religion and a host of others. At the same time, he managed to catapult himself to the top of his game in a Fortune 100 company doing what some idly speculated to be nothing less than international computer espionage.
But there was always the desire to change the world around him. And since the age of fifteen, he had become obsessed with writing as a means to this end. Year after year, he labored to prefect his craft, until he felt the time was right. In 2000, he teamed up with J.S. Lewis and with an eye to the stars, they launched The Revenge of the Shadow King.
Benz met and married his lovely wife in sunny Arizona, where they enjoy researching ancient civilizations and studying theology.
Born early enough to remember rotary phones, typewriters, and the glory years of Atari, J.S. Lewis has lived a rather obscure life in the shadows of many nearly famous people.
A member of the Grey Griffins (a secret club of courageous children who have vowed to save the world from evil overlords, alien invasions and brussel sprouts), Lewis grew up in the heartland of America. Yearning to become a marine biologist, but perplexed by the lack of exotic saltwater marine life in Iowa and Minnesota, he headed west. Sadly, his quest for the sea ended too soon, stranding him in the blustering desert of Arizona, where dreams of discovering new breeds of ferocious sharks were all but destroyed.
So it was, dejected and wandering like a drifting vagabond, that Lewis explored an eclectic career that would include news reporting, radio producing, animation, multi-media design, mural painting, speech writing, video game development and marketing.
Ever searching for new forms of creative expression, Lewis and boyhood friend Derek Benz sought to make their indelible mark through the written word. Thus from that collaboration was penned the novel The Revenge of the Shadow King.
Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
A somewhat bumpy, but enjoyable adventure
By Chris Gallagher
It's been said that Jon Lewis and Derek Benz, the authors of this story, were childhood friends who used to hang out together and pretend that they were running from goblins, monsters and other things as they acted out fantasy stories. For better or for worse, it shows in this book and helps shape it.
The Revenge of the Shadow King is a fantasy book about a group of friends who always hang out together, and enjoy playing a card game called Round Table. When strange events start to occur, it begins to look as if the characters from the card game are starting to come to life and appear in the real world. Things get stranger and more dire as the chaos only gets worse and begins to spread through the whole town, and Max and his friends are stuck in the middle of it.
Many creepy and violent things happen throughout the story. Characters become possessed, mysterious villains show up at the worst times, and there are many close brushes with death. If that's not enough, the kids even get framed for something they didn't do.
Max is developed enough to get us to know him a little better, as we get to understand why he dislikes his family's wealth, why he doesn't get along with his parents, and to some degree, his fear of his possible destiny. His friends don't fare so well in the characterization department. They show enough personality traits to make them interesting and likeable, but not enough to really flesh most of them out. The two boys can be summed up in simple sentences: Harley is a tough kid, but a nice guy deep down inside. Ernie is an asthmatic, overeating wimp who gets scared easily and is afraid to risk his life to help his friends.
Natalia's personality is the most detailed one out of Max's friends. She is "girly", riding around on a pink bicycle with tassels and unicorn stickers, and enjoying occasions that give her an excuse to dress up. She is smart, and carries a notebook which she uses to write things down to try to help herself figure things out. She likes to snoop around and investigate to try to learn things on her own. She's bossy and pinches people who annoy her. But she also has a strong sense of justice. For instance, there is one time when her friends express a desire to get revenge on Ray, a bully who has changed into a monster against his will who now poses a genuine threat to their life. Natalia rebukes them, claiming that his unfortunate, and unwilling, transformation made him someone to pity rather than to hate, and that he needed to be rescued from his fate. I like Natalia second most out of the characters, and can only wish Ernie and Harley could be developed as much.
The story is all about the adventures Max and his friends go on. There is always something interesting happening in each chapter, propelling the story along at a nice pace. On the other hand, quite a lot of it seems semi-random. There are plot elements that are picked up and then rarely touched upon afterward. For example, Max discovers he can sense where magic portals appear that take him to another world. We're told in the next few sentences that he sensed portals all throughout school over the next few days. After that, portals don't get mentioned for a long time, only for us to find out that Max can no longer sense them, until he suddenly uses one much later in the story. Essentially, what could have been a neat plot element was mostly unused. Similarly with a creature called a spriggan, who Max meets early on. He likes the spriggan, but he seems to forget about it around the time the book forgets about it. We are later told occasionally that he likes and misses the spriggan, but it appears in the story and is mentioned so rarely that I just didn't feel the connection.
There are also some seemingly random plot elements that are brought up and then totally left unused. At one point, a portal opens up, and Max tries to convince his friends to follow him in there. He lies to Natalia by claiming there are unicorns inside, and lo and behold, there are. There are a lot of neat things inside the world in the portal, but they are out of that world by the end of the chapter, and it is NEVER mentioned again. Not only is it not revisited, but it's not even mentioned in dialog or the plot. There are a couple instances of things like this, where a plot element that could have been great if expanded upon ended up being forgotten, just when I was really hoping to learn more about it.
Fortunately, there are some major plot elements that flesh out the story. The capture of an important adult figure, for instance, plays a pivotal role in the story, and is developed well enough for the audience to get engaged in his rescue. Another important development concerns a bully being possessed and changed into a monster, who makes repeat appearances throughout the story. There are a number of continuing plot threads and important characters, but there's also just as many minor random or forgotten events.
Likewise, there's many deus ex machina-esque close calls. Kids are about to be skewered by a goblin? Good thing a wandering wizard is nearby to stop it with a spell. About to be skewered by the same goblin again? Good thing a truck driver ran it over. An explanation is later given for these close calls, but I was hoping to see the kids become more self-sufficient. They do, but they seem to survive their perils more often not through their own wits or skill, but through luck and chance.
The thing is, much of why the book is this way can probably be chalked up to what I said in the first sentence. The authors were childhood friends who used to pretend that the events in this book were happening to them as they acted them out. That's what the book feels like: a group of kids experiencing a series of random violent adventures with some continuing/recurring plot elements. At times, it seems to follow the flow of make-believe play: "Pretend that the evil witch just sent a goblin to get us." "The goblin's back! Run!" "He's almost got me!" "A portal just opened, look! Head for the portal!" This also explains the occasional randomness of the plot: "Oh good, we just escaped through a portal." "But the portal took us right where the bad guys are, and now we have to make sure they can't see us." That's just the impression I get from reading this book. It's enjoyable fun, but full of contrivances.
Also, likely for the same reason, the dialog during the adventurous moments tends to sound more like what kids would say while pretending to be in danger than what they'd say if they really *were* in danger. While adventure novels obviously don't lean too closely towards realism so as not to ruin the fun, the dialog and storytelling do tend to make the kids seem like they are maybe a little *too* brave and willing to risk their lives, choosing to jump into adventure rather than being forced into it by circumstance. Then again, this is rather common for adventure stories - but the length and tone of the book led me to expect that it would be a little more realistic and take itself more seriously, so the tone of the dialog was quite unexpected.
There is one glowing positive that came from this story's "two friends just playing" origins: there is a great deal of banter - conversations the characters have when they're together and just hanging out. These scenes are plentiful and do a great job of making the kids more personable and likeable as characters. There were many times when I felt as if I could have been there, so believable were these moments.
The friendly banter and "pretend" adventure dialog combine to create a playfully adventurous mood. To be honest, once I got used to it, I began to enjoy this mixture. It defuses the seriousness once might expect from the menacing artwork on this hardcover book, or even the sheer amount of violence and close calls within, but it also makes the story more fun, which is possibly what the authors intended.
Even with its flaws, I was glued to the book throughout, save for the last few chapters. Deus ex machinas aside, I enjoyed the kids' constant brushes with danger. Even with the occasionally forgotten plot elements and sometimes seemingly random events, I still had fun seeing what happened to the characters. The Revenge of the Shadow King feels like the type of story that just flowed largely linearly from the author's imagination, albeit with a number of elements planned out beforehand. Not the most realistically fleshed-out story in existance, but an enjoyable way to get wrapped up in the moment, see what happens next, and have a fun time.
I've already ordered the sequels and will gladly read them when they arrive in the mail.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Cliches are ok, but these are never used in a clever or engaging way
By Pop Bop
This book has everything, but that ultimately means it does nothing.
For a plot, we have King Arthur and Morgan LaFey; Oberon, Titania and faeries; a magic book which must be joined with a magic jewel; Templars; hounds of hell, school bullies and possession by demons.
Our protagonists are a loyal hulk, a smartypants girl, a nerdy guy, and a superboy with a mysterious bloodline. Secondary characters are an ancient bodyguard, a kindly wizard guy, and a visiting witch.
Absolutely every single thing that happens for the full 370 pages is predictable, foreshadowed, underlined, and then explained.
Why three stars? Well, the book isn't silly, or frantic, or a hyperactive funny/doofus fantasy, (like NERDS, or Pals in Peril, or School of Fear). It is a very earnest, if totally uninspired, reworking of a tried and true formula. As such, it might encourage a young reader to read more and better efforts, and if all it does is get a young reader's attention, and maybe get that reader interested in this particular form of fantasy, (so that they can go on to books like the "Dark is Rising" sequence), well, that's probably enough to recommend it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Worth a read
By Mercedes
I didn't know what to expect with this book. I never figured it would be based around a game. I enjoyed the characters, Ernie is a wimp, but he grows on you as the book progresses. This isn't a page turner, nor is it boring. It did seem as alot was going on and the Grey Griffins were supposed to be saving the town etc etc, however, they did alot of talking. Not alot of action on their part. This book felt like the first Harry Potter book where you know its full of magic but you just don't seem to find alot of it actually practiced in the first book. This was a good book, not excellent, hence the 4 stars. I will be reading the rest of series.
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