To be honest, on the outside, you would not think of Keeper of the Lost Cities as much different from any other fantasy book, complete with goblins, trolls, ogres, dwarves, gnomes-and elves, of course. I would not recommend it to people who throw up or have nightmares easily. I would probably recommend Keeper of the Lost Cities to ten-year-olds and up, because there is plenty of blood, gore, pain, and cruelty. Every time a question is answered, ten more are raised-but more on that later. I have just finished Book 9, and it is a major rollercoaster of emotions, overflowing with revelations that tie into previous books. One odd detail about the numbering of the series is that the tenth book is labeled “Book 9,” because the ninth book is labeled “Book 8.5.” All other books have regular numbers. Keeper of the Lost Cities is the first book in a series of ten. She finds out more about her powers of telepathy, meets a goblin and lots of gnomes, learns to use a “leaping crystal,” and even fights against kidnappers. Sophie has many adventures in the scattered estates and cities the elves call The Lost Cities. Worse, she must leave her human family and her pet behind when she goes live with the elves. Sophie has to come to grips with the fact that her human parents and little sister cannot be her real family, because she is an elf. Another elf, an older boy named Fitz, introduces Sophie to the Elvin world.

She always knew she was strange, but soon finds out that she is an elf in a human world. At the start of the story, Sophie is an outsider, amazingly smart with a photographic memory, and she has just been invited to Yale University at twelve years old-but she has a secret. The protagonist of Keeper of the Lost Cities is a girl named Sophie. Little did I know I was not only right, but I would develop a massive obsession with every aspect of Keeper of the Lost Cities. And so I thought, Well, why not? It’s not like anything bad could come of trying out a new fantasy book. Basically, 90% of my personal library is just adventure fantasy. I had previously enjoyed many fantasy series: Harry Potter, Wings of Fire, How to Train Your Dragon, Artemis Fowl, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Percy Jackson, of course. I had nothing to read, and the book was in my favorite genre: adventure fantasy. I first read Keeper of the Lost Cities on October of 2020, for the Stone Soup Book Club.

The lost cities book