The Dragondain by Richard Due

Title: The Dragondain (Moon Realm #2)
Author:Richard Due
Pages: 304 
Published: December 7th, 2012

Summary: It's the middle of the night, you need to send your brother to the Moon Realm, and he won’t wake up. So you improvise. . . .

When a confused Jasper awakes, he's convinced he's dreaming. But by the time he meets Greydor, Jasper understands that this is no dream. In fact, persuading the King of the Rinn to work with the men of Dain to defeat their common enemy is a nightmare. Then there’s the other side of the coin: convincing Tavin and Dubb that saddling a Rinn isn’t certain death. (“It’ll be fun!”) And perhaps even a greater worry: can he make friends with Dubb’s daughter Darce before she punches his lights out?

Lily has problems, too. There’s a little mousie scratching in her closet. Or at least, it sounds like a little mousie. Oh, and her second confrontation with Curse, and trying to form her first peerin. (Don’t you have to be from Dain to do that?) And where’s Ebb?

One thing’s for sure: now that Lily and Jasper have entered the Moon Realm, nothing can ever be the same again.

Review:

A feisty sequel to The Moon Coin, The Dragondain is a fun and suspenseful adventure into the nine moons of the Moon Realm. Beginning precisely where The Moon Coin left off, Jasper is transported into the moon of the Rinn and he must figure out what is going on if he is going to survive his trip to the Moon Realm.  Jasper has his own part in all the madness that has become finding his uncle on these moons that rotate around each other and Lily does as well, but this time, she may not realize her follies until it is too late.

Mr. Due has a way of crafting a world around us with every flip of the moon coin and every clang of a sword he makes us, all at once, relive our dreams and hopes as children, wanting nothing more than to have adventures of our own. In The Dragondain, that all seems possible once again. Each moon crafted and molded into a fine balance of beauty and adventure, it dances across our senses never pausing for a moment in their ability to stun us and usher us into worlds beyond the one in which we live. The characters of The Dragondain are just as boisterous and creative as the moons on which they live. The Dain, humans so to speak, are just magical enough that the reality of it makes us put up our own fingers in front of our faces to make a peerin of our very own. And maybe, just maybe if we concentrate hard enough we will see something fantastic.

And while this title is considered middle-grade fiction (ages 7-12) due to the ages of its protagonists,  it is so much more than that. It is an addictive drug for those of us who have lovingly flipped through its pages. It is the fantastical story you dreamed of while waiting to fall asleep. It is youth brought to life. It is all the things I still wish I could do. Things like have adventures of my very own.

With an ending that will surprise you, Mr. Due leads us to places and through a story that makes us think we may burst with the intensity of it all, leaving us wanting so much more than we ever thought we could. A book for all ages, The Dragondain does not disappoint. A cliffhanger waits at the end if this sequel, but not so much that you're frustrated as much as you simply feel satisfied for what you have read, grateful to wait for what comes next. With many questions still left at hand, the release of the next book in the Moon Realm series cannot come soon enough.

5/5 stars

Find Richard Due:

Webpage/Goodreads/Amazon