Name: The Voyage to Magical North
ISBN: 9781627794206

Claire Fayers

"Twelve-year-old Brine Seaborne and her friend Peter find themselves in an adventure with pirates, invisible bears, and a seriously evil magician"--

The Voyage to Magical North

Mary Horton

This is my kind of book.

Just by reading the synopsis, I had the feeling this book would be awesome. And was it?

Was it, you ask?

Yes. Yes, it was.


  Lovely Things:


- UM EVERYTHING??

- Okay, seriously. This book was so fun. It was whimsical and quirky and hilarious and action-packed...basically all the things I love in a book. I had a hard time believing this was Claire Fayers's first book, honestly. It was packed with creativity. 

- The setting. This is a fantasy book, but it also has pirates and characters who are allergic to magic and invisible bears and sword-wielding librarians. IT'S JUST A FUN SETTING AND I LOVED IT. Literally everythingggg was up my alley. 

- The humor. This book was quite amusing! The main character loves to use sarcasm (bless her), and the writing style is just naturally humorous. I looooooved how the author described things:

Her name, improbably, was Trudi Storme. Short and sunburned, with a frizz of yellow hair and a figure that started going out at her neck and didn't return until her knees, she looked like a mushroom that had been struck by lightning.

Case. In. Point.

- The characters. Ah, yes. The characters. They were a fun lot! I LOVED Brine and Tom and Cassie and Ewan AND ALL OF THEM. Because let's face it: pirates are just fun characters.


  Not So Lovely Things:


- Not much, really. There was a very brief mention of evolution, a question about whether the afterlife existed (no answer was given), and a part where a character had to resuscitate another person (which they described as "kissing," but it obviously wasn't).

- I WANTED MORE LIBRARY SCENES. Because the library sounded amazing and I WANT TO KNOW MORE.

Overall? THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING. If you like magical, whimsical middle-grade novels with pirates and sass...read this book.

5 stars!

Jessica Nottingham

This book was fantastic! Seriously, I don't know how you could look at the cover of The Voyage to Magical North and not immediately want to add it to your reading list. Look at that cover! It screams danger, adventure, and pirates. What more could you want? Better still, it absolutely delivers on every single one of those promises. Are you looking for a wild and magical adventure, fraught with danger? Claire Fayers has you covered.

Brine and Peter quickly became two of my new favorite characters. Fayers wrote them so richly, that it was hard not to feel like I was right alongside them. These two couldn't be more different, but watching them learn how to navigate together and how to understand one another, was a wonderful experience. There was so much depth to everything that Brine and Peter did. They were flawed, they were young, they were human. Couple that with adventures that threw them straight into the tentacles of sea monsters? Well now, you have my attention.

Truly, this story is chock full of everything a Middle Grade reader could ever want. High seas shenanigans, wonderfully thought out magic, harrowing encounters, and so much hilarious snark that it's hard not to giggle while reading this. I loved that Claire Fayers walked that line between light and dark in The Voyage to Magical North. As good Fantasy books should, this story explores some of the scarier and darker places that one must go to in order to persevere. Those were always my favorite kinds of stories as a kid, and that's still true to this day.

Trust me, this book is a keeper! It's a must read for adventure lovers of all ages. Strap in, sit back, and prepare to go on a journey. Claire Fayers has you covered.

The Voyage to Magical North

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