Serendipitously, I found this book among the scarce stacks of our school's library; remembering my immense, lasting fondness for Barron's The Lost Years of Merlin series, I thought it would be permissible to add a Y.A. novel to my current reading list. In trying to analyze this book, it might be good to break it down into two categories: youth Talbot and teacher Talbot — imagining what I would have wanted as a child/preteen and stating what is good for young readers, in turn, as a teacher. The two obviously relate quite a bit, and are certainly not mutually-exclusive of one another.
Youth: Foreign landscape leading into the fey, time travel, magic, disconcerting beings, fog, moving islands, enchanted artifacts, long-lost peoples, gift-giving helpers, ancient evils, equally-ancient goods, large trees, healthy doses of adventure, elements of friendships, mystery.
Teacher: A strong focus on environmentalism, believable and relate-able characters who grow in admirable ways through time, redemption and forgiveness, determination, grief and loss and that which is born in their crucible, journeying and home-coming, and everything else mentioned above, which I still love.