"A golden box, a magical world, and a quest to quench darkness with light — this Middle Grade fantasy also reels with real-world life-changing relationships."
Feeling the stress of her parents’ divorce and consequent move to a new house (actually, her deceased grandmother’s old house), Federico Ivanier’s enchantingly gripping Sword of Fire sees 12-year-old Martina embrace her destiny to embark on a quest to redress the balance between darkness and light.
Though Martina has long encountered the Wanderer in the Darkness (“She’d always had these nightmares, ever since she could first remember”), it’s only after finding a strange glowing golden box in her grandmother’s house that her destiny becomes clear, when she slips into the magical realm of Novrogod and discovers she’s the long-awaited “Sent One”, on whose young shoulders it falls to protect the realm from the clutches of Voraz, a wizard of Darkness.
Though bullied by her new stepsister, Martina finds a comrade in her stepbrother Matias and together they strive to find an assortment of magical objects that hold the key to protecting Novrogod.
There’s a bold lyricism to the writing, and kudos must go to translator Claire Storey for rendering the text so beautifully. Pacey and compellingly conjured, Sword of Fire strikes a satisfying balance between real-world struggles and those of a richly-imagined fantastical sphere.
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