Keeper of the Lost Cities

Keeper of the Lost Cities contains aspects of several major literary forms: fantasy, coming-of-age, hero’s journey, and adventure. These combine to form a story tuned to the interests of middle-grade readers.

Fantasies contain elements that are fantastic or magical, things not possible in the real world. In high, or full, fantasy, a fictional world is imbued, through and through, with magical elements. Examples include epics such as the Lord of the Rings series and TV’s Game of Thrones. In low, or partial, fantasy, miraculous powers intrude on an otherwise normal world. The book Half Magic, about a coin that grants wishes by halves, and the Kingdom Keepers series, in which a group of kids nightly enter a magical realm inside Disney World, are types of low fantasy.

Keeper of the Lost Cities introduces readers to a hidden realm on Earth controlled by elves, a species of highly intelligent human-like beings, many of whom have magical abilities: telepathy, psychokinesis, pyrokinesis, mesmerism, and others. Much of the story concerns their use of these powers while dealing with a crisis in the human world. Thus, Keeper of the Lost Cities is a form of low fantasy: Its magical elf realm intrudes on the normal, everyday reality of Earth.

Most middle-grade novels are coming-of-age stories that contain young protagonists who must cope with crises that force them to become wiser and more mature. Protagonist Sophie Foster discovers that she doesn’t belong to her own family and that she has multiple super-abilities. She must learn to manage her powers, deal with an entirely new society, and take dangerous risks to survive. In the process, she grows up.

The story also describes a hero’s journey. Joseph Campbell’s books on mythology—especially his The Hero with a Thousand Faces—point to the recurrence of heroic-quest stories in world literature and folklore. Such heroes must leave home, develop their powers to face great dangers, train with a mentor, suffer mightily and recover, and return to their people in triumph. A popular example is the Star Wars film series, in which a young boy leaves home to confront galactic dangers, discover his real heritage, master his nascent superpower, and confront his true destiny. Star Wars creator George Lucas credits Campbell’s ideas as inspiration for the films. (Seastrom, Lucas. “Mythic Discovery Within the Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Joseph Campbell Meets George Lucas - Part I.” Star Wars, 22 Oct 2015.)

Other hero’s journeys in popular media include Interview with the Vampire—a young man is transformed into another being and must master his new powers and defeat enemies—and The Hunger Games, where a young girl enters a dangerous contest, grows in strength and skill, and overturns the corrupt culture in which the contest is embedded.

Similarly, Sophie leaves her human foster parents to dwell in the elf world, where she masters newfound psychic powers under the direction of her Mentors at school, suffers at the hands of evil opponents, slides toward despair and death, finally prevails, and returns to her new friends, enhanced and triumphant.

As a heroic journey, the Keeper story also is an adventure in which the protagonist confronts many perils. She also faces daunting emotional challenges that propel her into dangerous encounters and thrilling exploits.

Among books that resemble Keeper of the Lost Cities, the most similar is the Harry Potter series. In both, the protagonists enter adolescence, discover that their real parents had powerful abilities, and realize that their own powers are even more powerful. They attend special schools for kids with magical powers, where they make friends and enemies. They discover that they must fight against immense, dark forces that mean to take over their world, forces only they can stop.

The protagonists’ sudden development of magical powers, their conflicts with authority figures, and their confrontation with dangerous strangers symbolize the journey of adolescence, in which young people suddenly change physically and mentally, discover new strengths, struggle with new responsibilities, rebel against rules and authorities, and find their way to a new and larger role in society. The protagonists’ status as orphans also resonates with many teenage readers, who can sometimes experience feelings of alienation from their families.

Both series contain the same four literary elements: fantasy, coming-of-age, hero’s journey, and adventure. Like Harry Potter, Keeper of the Lost Cities tells a densely packed and multilayered story filled with ambitious, aspirational ideas for young teens to ponder and dream about as they gather the bits of magic that lie, often hidden, in every person’s life.