A Book Review of Children of the Ancient Heroes by Russell J Fellows

Hello everyone!!!! Isabelle Knight here again with another MG fantasy book review, and this a book that I really, really love!!!!!!!!!!!! And special thanks to Carol Baldwin for providing the review copies! ^^ They are fantastic books, and I really am incredibly grateful for Carol for providing the review copies!! You’re the best!!!

Anyway, the fantastic, magical, unique, vivid, rich, and wildly wonderful middle-grade book I’m going to be reviewing today is Children of the Ancient Heroes, book one, by Russell J. Fellows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is such an amazing book, and I had such a great time reading it! It was super fun to get into the character’s heads, and the dual POV makes it such a rich and interesting read!! The worldbuilding was amazing and really magical, and I just really loved this book! 🙂 Especially since Russell J. Fellows and I apparently both have a villainous character named Ravena in our books… It was quite a surprise when I found out!

Anyway, Children of the Ancient Heroes is about two siblings, Tirza and Eli — Tirza is 13 years old, and she really longs for adventure and magic and all that, while on the other hand, her brother Eli would rather have stability and have an actual home! When one day, they read a book that their father explicitly told them not to read, a book that is filled with lots of old stories and eerie poems, they are suddenly transported from their home and into a totally different world – the Lighted Lands, and there they discover a lot of family secrets and also find out about a villain (well, two villains I suppose) – Ravena and Xaphad…

I really loved this book!!! It was such a great read, and I just had so much fun being able to spend time in the heads of these two characters and explore this magical world with them!! The worldbuilding is just so detailed and magical and charming, the characters all have their own very vivid personalities, and it’s just such a fantastic book that I think any middle-grade reader would love!! 🙂

One thing I loved about this book was the dual POV! I actually haven’t read that many MG books with dual POVs (I have read two great ones – The Fox Girl and the White Gazelle by Victoria Williamson and The Boy with the Butterfly Mind, also by Victoria Williamson!), and I just really love when middle-grade books do that and really manage to pull that off by letting us see through the eyes of these two rather different characters, and I think Russell J. Fellows definitely did just that! I just loved getting to see through the eyes of the two totally different siblings and to see how different their thoughts and perspectives were!!!

And I also had a lot of favorite characters in this book!! All of them were just so fascinating (especially the new characters they meet in the Lighted Lands), and the author definitely did an amazing job of crafting them and their personalities!! If I were forced to pick a favorite, it would probably have to be Eli — I feel like I definitely relate to him more. As much as I really wish magic and adventure existed in the real world, I’d er, probably not be as thrilled as I thought I’d be to be dragged into this whole other world!! I just really related to him and all of his thoughts and actions and his personality, and so he’d probably be my favorite character in this book!

I also really like Cal, who is a Mimique, and she’s forced to work for Ravena as her slave, and there was just something about reading from her POV that just really intrigued me! I also love how it also gave us an insight into what is going on behind the scenes of the villain’s plan!

Ah yes, and of course, I forgot to mention that the book isn’t totally dual POV, because as I’ve just said, there’s a chapter from Cal’s POV! Normally having these really different point-of-views while reading can be really jarring, but I think it worked really well in this book, and I just really loved how the author was able to give us a look into what else is going on in this world behind the scenes!!

Again, I really loved the worldbuilding! There was just something so magical about the Lighted Lands — it’s this strange world that these two siblings have been dragged into, and the more you get into the book, the more you discover about the world and the characters and all of the history and magic and secrets!! The more I read the book, the more I got invested in this world and the more I wanted to know! And to be honest, I didn’t even realize that I was so invested until I got to the end of book one (which ends on quite a cliffhanger!) and all of a sudden I realized, “Oh wait, now I simply must know what happens next!!!!” The author really made me care for this world and these characters without me even realizing it!

I also really liked the villain of this book – Ravena. And it was actually such a shock to see this character in this book because… well, I have a villain named Ravena too!!! And this Ravena just felt really similar to my own character, so that was quite a surprise (a nice one!)! If you guys don’t know Ravena from the Enchantria series, she is this evil, dark sorceress who also hatches twisted plans to poison queens and take over the kingdom of Enchantria.

Although this Ravena in Russell J. Fellow’s book certainly has a much more intriguing past/motive than my Ravena, and she really has this strong motive that pushes her forward, and I guess I’d say she’s not totally evil? I mean, I can understand her motivations and why she wants to do all of this, which is always great to read in a book!!

Another thing about this book is that it’s also kind of a Christian fantasy, but it’s really done in a way that feels like it’s really just a part of the world — there are mentions of the World Maker/God, but unlike some books I read, it just really does feel like it’s a part of the world, and it’s really done in a way that enhances the story and also still makes it enjoyable for everyone, even if they’re not Christians!

And the cliffhanger at the end….. O.O I won’t spoil anything, but suffice to say it had me desperately wanting to read more. ;D

But yeah! Overall, I really loved this book!!! I fell in love with all of these characters and this wondrous world, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a good middle-grade fantasy full of magic, rich history, and deep characters! I’d also recommend it to fans of L.B. Anne’s books!!

So yeah! Thank you guys so much for coming, I really hope you enjoyed this book review, and I also hope that you’ll go check out this book!! It’s a fantastic middle-grade book! And if you want to find more reviews/interviews/anything middle-grade book related, MMGM has a lot of those!

So goodbye, adios for now, and I hope to see you in the next post! 🙂

Isabelle

EDIT: Yes, the post is being published earlier than I thought, just because I pushed the wrong button and well, there’s no undoing that now. 🤷‍♀️