This is a great fantasy novel that kids will love. The world building is excellent and it is full of adventure. The characters are separate for a large portion of the book and the author does a good job of keeping the story moving while moving back and forth between the characters. I found the book to be too long for the intended audience (it is over 500 pages) and think that will turn off many readers (it turned me off). It is also fully in the fantasy genre and does not offer much for crossover readers.
Appropriateness: Curtis gets drunk off of blackberry wine in the first few chapters. It is treated as a fantasy event (and frankly, it makes him look like an idiot) and is not treated as a fun or a good decision, he drinks the wine because he is not offered water. It is not anything that would bother me as a parent. There is however a large amount of gruesome violence that young children might find upsetting. The back of my ARC says this book is for grades 3-7 and I disagree with that assessment. The book is HUGE and there are some massive vocabulary words which lead me to believe that it is written at a far more difficult reading level than the average third or fourth grader could handle. The length makes it too long to work as a read aloud. I would recommend this book to readers in grades 5-8 who are fans of fantasy (both male and female).
ARC provided by publisher (not sure who actually sent me the book, it arrived at my house so if you sent it thanks!
-- If you really want to be entertained go check out the reviews on Amazon. There is a delightfully hysterical one star review that made me laugh, it has an absurd amount of not helpful results.
