The Five Kingdoms - Sky Raiders --Madison!

          On Tuesday I finished Sky Raiders, the first book in the Five Kingdoms series. The series is by Brandon Mull, a New York Times best selling author. 

           The story starts in Mesa, Arizona. The character on the front cover, Cole, is the protagonist. Basically, he and his friends go to a Halloween haunted house. What they got, though, was completely unexpected. A slaver from another dimension captured all of the kids! Cole managed to get away by diving behind a statue. He traveled to the Outskirts, a place that lies between wakefulness and dreaming, reality and imagination, and life and death. Soon after, he gets caught by the slavers and sold to the Sky Raiders. The Sky Raiders invade sky castles, which often contain hidden treasure. Cole's last mission is where he meets a seeming named Lyrus. Seemings are a type of shaping that is only found in Sambria, one of the five kingdoms in the Outskirts. They seem real, they can even kill you, but are not real. Anyway, Cole convinces Lyrus that he is not real, and Lyrus promises to help Cole continue his journey through the castle. He ends up winning a bow that needs no arrows, a picture that tells the next day's weather, and some jewels. A peculiar girl named Mira is also a Sky Raider. She has a secret that could endanger her and Cole's lives. Mira is... I'M NOT TELLING YOU! Read the book to find it out, because I'm going to feel guilty if I tell you and you end up reading the book. 

               Two unfamiliar words in this book were rungs and velocity. A Rung means a crosspiece, usually rounded, forming the steps of a ladder. Sentence:

Leaning away from the rungs, Cole dropped into the darkness.

                   Velocity means quickness of motion or operation. Original Sentence:  At this velocity, simply clipping the wall could cause a major injury.