the Blind King) seems to believe the kids’ best shot at survival is to become Maldor’s greatest enemy. Although any person could fit that description, very few do. In short, heroism means doing the right thing regardless of the consequences. And though Jason doesn’t feel like much of a hero, the Blind King inspires him with these words: Nevertheless this Blind King ennobles Jason, introduces him to Rachel, and sends them on the quest.

One who nearly succeeded, and lived to tell the tale, now lives in a ruined castle, a blind king without a kingdom, mentally and physically broken. If he speaks it in the presence of Maldor, the emperor will be destroyed. Once all six syllables are assembled, Jason can only speak it once. The book, and the loremaster of the Repository of Learning where he finds it, send Jason on a quest to collect the separately hidden syllables of a word of power. And just when Jason thinks he’s on the scent of a way home, he reads something in a forbidden book that makes him Public Enemy Number One. Weird races, created long ago by a group of wizards, are doing weird things, following an agenda that either serves or seeks to overthrow an evil wizard emperor named Maldor.

Things are going on in Lyrian that they don’t understand. From the moment they arrive, they are in danger. Later, Jason meets a girl his age named Rachel, who followed the more usual route by walking under a stone arch and suddenly finding herself elsewhere. It’s not how most visitors from our reality find their way to the magical land of Lyrian. Leaning closer, he falls into the hippo’s mouth, slides down a long chute, and comes out at the bottom of a hollow tree in a completely different world. Thirteen-year-old Jason is an ordinary, baseball-playing, zoo-volunteering kid from Colorado, until the day he hears music coming out of a hippopotamus.

A World Without Heroes by Brandon Mull