On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson
JD's rating: 4 of 5 bookmarks

This is Book One of the Wingfeather Saga, a young adult fantasy series consisting of four novels set in the land of Aerwiar. The author is a singer and songwriter and I have been a fan of his music for many years. This book series has been recommended to me multiple times in the past several years and I frankly don't know why it's taken me so long to give it a try.

I did find this book a little difficult to get into at the beginning. The first handful of chapters move excruciatingly slow, but things do pick up around the quarter mark or so. The story world and its creatures are a little difficult to envision, but I soon decided to just overlook that and try to get into the characters.

The main characters of Janner, Tink, and Leeli are wonderful. I really did like them after the story finally got going and began to pique my interest. The other characters in the town are charming and add lots of color to the narrative.

Peterson writes with what I can only think to call a whimsicality which at times can be endearing, but at other times can be annoying due it's tendency toward playfulness over specificity. Of course, that is just my personal taste so setting that aside, the writing is very good and it is obvious that much care was given to the way he is unfolding the story.

Overall, I did enjoy the book and I can certainly see how this is building up to be a fairly epic adventure. My sense of the tale at this point is that it could turn out to be less dark and more light-hearted quest story similar to the Lord of the Rings saga but aimed at a younger demographic. I look forward to continuing the series and following along with the Igiby family's journeys.





J.D. Sutter is the producer and host of the Bookworm Banquet podcast and editor of the blog. He is the founder of Porchlight Family Media.