Fall of the Beasts, Book 1: Immortal Guardians Kicks off a Brand New Spirit Animals Series

And so, the saga continues. The second series, Fall of the Beasts, is aptly named. A villainous enemy has the ability to claim the Great Beasts for himself, breaking the bonds they had made to the children they were destined for. As if that weren’t bad enough, all the spirit animals of the world are threatened by a sickness that has befallen the Evertree that brings them into being. In the first book of the series, Immortal Guardians, by Eliot Schrefer, the four kids from the first books set out again with their Spirit Animal companions–Conor and Meilin heading deep underground to face the mystery of the sickness killing the world tree, and Rollan and Abeke setting off to find one of the few Great Beasts who has not been enslaved.
Conor and Meilin have a new companion, Takoda, whose spirit animal is the Great Ape, Kovo. Kovo had been their enemy, and now they must struggle to work alongside him. But Kovo is not known for being a team player…will he use his tremendous power for good, or does he still have an agenda of his own? Rollan and Abeke meet a new ally too–Anda, a Native American boy who has been chosen by the great Elk.
Not only are the adventures, especially that of Conor and Meilin in the stange underground world they discover, tremendously exciting (the fight against the strange enemies threatening the underground civilization makes the pages turn especially fast!), but fans of the first books will be thrilled to journey with these friends again. The kids are still young, so romance remains on the horizon, but it’s coming closer… Fall of the Beasts Book Two: Broken Ground, by Victoria Schwab, comes out in January, and after the cliff-hanger ending of this book (it’s a doozy!) readers will want to pounce on it.
Older readers might well be drawn to the series by the stellar cast of authors, many of whom have huge existing fan bases, like Maggie Stiefvater, Shannon Hale, and Marie Lu, who can be counted on to bring good writing and wellsprings of creativity to the stories (sometimes almost too much creativity perhaps for an adult reader; for instance, I myself couldn’t quite believe in the rhinoceros riders who appear in the third book of the first series, Blood Ties, by Garth Nix, although my son had no problem with them!).

Both the Spirit Animals series have great kid appeal; if you have a reluctant reader who loves animals, do offer these. Any kid who thinks that having a powerful animal companion as a friend sounds enchanting (which is, clearly, a lot of kids) will find the books tremendously appealing. As an added bonus, the cast of characters is multicultural—Meilin is from an alternate China, and Abeke from an alternate sub-Saharan Africa, and the girls are just as tough and powerful as the boys (perhaps even more so!). An online game that accompanies the books lets kids create a character and summon a spirit animal of their own, adding to the fun, and helping hook kids on the series. And as the mother a picky reader myself, getting your kid engrossed in a nice long run of books, which the Spirit Animals series offers, is a great thing, and makes book choosing so much easier!
Immortal Guardians (Spirit Animals: Fall of the Beasts, Book 1) is out on August 11!