Flyte : Had A magical Entertaining Start, But Sadly Loses Direction

Flyte : Had A magical Entertaining Start, But Sadly Loses Direction

Okay this time around the book is Flyte by Angie Sage. And yes this is the one of cheesey wizards fantasy books that is only founding the colorful kids section of book stores. It’s two inches thick and made to look like spell book and neighbors Lemony Snicket and James and The Giant peach. But you know what, I‘m not going defend myself any or cover up the truth. I every once and a whole will read a kid book. I will read, Shutter Island, Guilty Pleasures, Lovecraftian work, but a simple read like this can really be relaxing. And I did buy this book. A whole eight dollars, so don’t say a thing.

Flyte is the second book of the Septimus Heap series. The first book is called Magyck. And to be honest the first book is just a overall rip off from Harry Potter, but somehow I thought tad more inventive, because this did not chronicle a boy going to a magical school. It was about a orphan who runs with a family of wizards from the great extraordinary wizard Domdaniel. And on their journey, the orphan learns he’s the lost wizard’s son Spetimus, and their adopted daughter is the missing princess and like in most kid books, they save the save the day.

But this one it feels a lot less Harry Pottery. It starts with Septimus jealous and now evil brother (Simon) finding Domdaniels bones in the swamp and planning to bring him back to life to be the most powerful extraordinary wizard so he can be his apprentice. He starts a series of things, that in chain of events will cause this happen by kidnapping the princess (Jenna), who Septimus runs off to save.

So let’s start with the good. This author with this book stepped out of the Harry Potter shadow adding to this world making it her own. This is a very simple read , but the author added new and likable characters so the cast. My personal favorite is wolf boy. Also even though this is number two in a series, this is book that you could read by itself and still know what was going on. So if you do read this before Magyck, you won’t feel burned or confused.

So here’s the bad. The book starts out fun. It starts on this quest that Septimus takes, that even the youngest of readers couldn’t take seriously. This story is just full of too many cute and silly things that you know that its not on to get to frightening, especially for younger readers. And call me a nerd, when it started out this way it felt like the Legend of Zelda. And what I mean but that, it’s all swords, magic, dragons, but portrayed in the simplest of fashion. But somewhere in the middle that fades away. Sept and Jenna meet up again and it started to feel like the random “misadventures of Jenna and Septimus.” The original did stay focused all the way through. This one, not so much. Simon shows up randomly to attack and then disappears again entirely. And it even strays so far from the story that there is a big chunk of it about Sept trying to raise a dragon, which has nothing to do with the rest of these story.

Overall, for kids this is great stuff. They’ll love every bit of it. But unlike the first one I can’t recommend it to anyone else, because the story loses direction of what it is trying to tell. If it stayed focused and didn’t get too off track, I would like it like the first. So because this book is made for kids, I’m giving it a higher than average rating. But I think even kids might like the first one better.

3 smoothies out of four.

P.S. Check out my book and Ebook website Lelue’s Realm. Google it or go directly to http://www.freewebs.com/lelue/