Sarah's Reviews > The Dark Hills Divide

The "Land of Elyon" in the series title is a small nation of fearful settlements, surrounded by a wall. Of the settlements, Bridewell is the closest to the Dark Hills outside the wall, which the settlers speculate are full of criminals and monsters. Precocious twelve-year-old Alexa Daley is the daughter of the mayor of another settlement. Every summer her father goes to Bridewell to consult with the other mayors, and she tags along to scrounge the library for information on the outside world.

When she's not reading, Alexa pretends to be an explorer or detective. She won't need to pretend this year.

Content Advisory
Violence: A man plans a violent uprising which culminates in a siege, albeit with a low body count. The same man menaces a kid and tries to stab her with a poker. A brave squirrel is almost killed by two evil cats. (view spoiler)[The cats eventually get squished by a falling bookshelf. They had it coming, but violence against ANY animals is a no-go for some youngsters. Know your kids. (hide spoiler)]

Sex: An adult asks our heroine if she's ever kissed a boy. Just a weird question for a grown-up to ask a kid.

Language: None.

Substance Abuse: Pervis is frequently hammered. The book does not glamorize his drinking, but neither does it judge him for it. Alexa eventually concludes that he drinks to deal with the stress of his perilous job.

Politics and Religion: There are some Christian allegorical elements in this series. They are not obvious in this first book. I didn't find them preachy at all, but your mileage may vary.

Nightmare Fuel: Nothing in this installment, but plenty in the later books. Again, know your kids!

Conclusion
The first installment in Patrick Carman's Elyon series is a solid middle-grade adventure/fantasy/mystery with a well-crafted setting and palpable sense of dread. Alexa is a brave and clever kid who has a good relationship with her dad and other authority figures. She never puts on airs about her intelligence. Looks and boys are not on her radar yet. Despite being very mature in some ways, she's still a kid who loses her temper and gets distracted by "unspeakably gross" things.

The story certainly borrows elements of Narnia and Middle-earth, with perhaps a hint of Alice, but Carman does not lift enough from any single source that it ever feels like a rip-off. There's nothing terribly original here either, but it is definitely enough of its own thing to sustain interest, even for a fussy elder stateswoman like myself.

Carman says in his afterword that this story began as a serial for his daughters, and the book maintains a bedtime story quality. This should be great for kids 10 and up to read alone, and younger can enjoy it as a read aloud.