by Dawn L. Watkins
1985 / 213 pages

This will be a fun one for Grade 4/5 boys. Young Trave plans to be king one day, but in the meantime, the current king of Gadalla, his uncle, won’t even let him learn to ride a horse. Trave’s life takes a turn when a rider comes to warn his uncle of an impending war, and tries to recruit him as an ally against the “Dark Alliance.” His uncle dismisses the warning but allows Trave to head off with the departing rider, happy to be done with this annoying boy. But why does the rider have any interest in Trave? Because the rider turns out to be the king of the neighboring nation of Kapnos, and he knew Trave’s father back when he was the fighting king of Gadalla. This King Gris is eager to help Trave become the king not simply that Trave wants to be, but that the neighboring nations need him to be, to stop the Dark Alliance.

And while Trave appreciates being rescued from his uncle, he doesn’t like being treated like a schoolboy in need of lessons. He mistakenly believes that being a king means fighting and giving orders, rather than serving. And that makes him susceptible to the flattery of the Dark Alliance’s leader, who wants Trave on his side.

This is a quick tale, that has some depth to it, because of the three kingly lessons that Trave needs to know, not just by heart, but in his bones. He finds out, the hard way, that a king needs:

• to learn what is true
• to believe what is true
• to act on what is true

While the author is Christian, that’s more notable in the lack of any new age or woke weirdness, rather than the presence of any spiritual dimension to the book. The only diety-mention of any kind is that the bad guys worship and are also terrified of owls.

Boys will love the story, and appreciate the twenty or so great pictures, including one of the evil king riding what looks like a miniature (yet still large) T-rex. That’s a reason to get the book all on its own! Another highlight is the curious creature Nog, who lives under a bog, and his every line, is always spoken in rhyme.

While this is a little too simple for teens, it’s one that’ll really appeal to the 9-12 set, and younger even, if Dad is reading it as a bedtime book. This works well as a stand-alone, but I was initially excited to learn there is both a sequel and a prequel. However, the sequel, Arrow struck me as having too many characters to keep track of, and there was an added mystical dimension thrown in, where a queen and princess used a mirrored portal to unexplainedly travel to another realm. Mysterious can be good when the mystery is eventually revealed, but this magical turn is left unexplained, and that bothered both me and my oldest daughter too when she read it.

The original was good enough that I still checked out the prequel, Shield, and while it might have also suffered from too many characters, it was much more like the original. Good, if not quite as great. So I’d recommend just the two – Medallion and Shield – while noting that the content in Arrow is “safe” enough (there’s nothing problematic) for any child who wants to complete the series.