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The Five Stones Trilogy #1
The Fog of Forgetting
In The Fog of Forgetting, the beginning of a new adventure-fantasy trilogy, five children wash up on the shores of an foreign land, unwitting agents of destiny in a realm struggling to withstand a force that could change their world -- and ours -- forever.
Move over, Narnia. The journey to Ayda has begun.
Sneaking out for a quick boat ride on a summer day, five children find themselves engulfed in a curtain of dense, powerful fog that transports them from the rocky Maine coast to the mysterious island of Ayda. Rescued by Seaborne, a machete-toting wayfarer of few words, the children suddenly find themselves at the center of a centuries-old battle between Dankar, the ruler of Exor, and three siblings that rule the other realms of Ayda. At stake are the four stones of power and the elusive Fifth Stone that binds them all.
When 9-year-old Frankie is kidnapped by Dankar, her older sister Evelyn and the three Thompson brothers must learn to harness the powers of the daylights, ancient forces of earth, fire, water, and air, to navigate their way through the realms of Ayda, rescue her, and find a way home.
G.A. Morgan is a powerful new voice in the young adult adventure-fantasy genre, telling a story full of myth and mystery, action and peril. In Ayda, she has created a land rich with history and steeped in lore, one that exists not just in imagination but unnervingly, realistically, parallel to ours.
Move over, Narnia. The journey to Ayda has begun.
Sneaking out for a quick boat ride on a summer day, five children find themselves engulfed in a curtain of dense, powerful fog that transports them from the rocky Maine coast to the mysterious island of Ayda. Rescued by Seaborne, a machete-toting wayfarer of few words, the children suddenly find themselves at the center of a centuries-old battle between Dankar, the ruler of Exor, and three siblings that rule the other realms of Ayda. At stake are the four stones of power and the elusive Fifth Stone that binds them all.
When 9-year-old Frankie is kidnapped by Dankar, her older sister Evelyn and the three Thompson brothers must learn to harness the powers of the daylights, ancient forces of earth, fire, water, and air, to navigate their way through the realms of Ayda, rescue her, and find a way home.
G.A. Morgan is a powerful new voice in the young adult adventure-fantasy genre, telling a story full of myth and mystery, action and peril. In Ayda, she has created a land rich with history and steeped in lore, one that exists not just in imagination but unnervingly, realistically, parallel to ours.
303 pages, Hardcover
First published July 17, 2014
7 people are currently reading
149 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
July 21, 2017
Just as good as it was the first one. Maine-based fantasy? Thank you. I'll tell it.
September 29, 2016
The book “The Fog of Forgetting”, by G.A. Morgan, is a fantasy book. This is fantasy, because there is so much magic, and so many creatures that no one has ever heard of! This is told in a 3rd person point of view. The theme of this book is family because 2 families have to work together to escape this world and get back home.
This book took place in a foreign land when 5 kids get mysteriously washed up on the shore after they fell asleep on a boat. When one of the girls get taken, everyone has to save her with the help of their new friends. Not only that, but they have to get the 5 stones that can and will be used in the forces of evil if they don’t get them first.
I recommend this book to middle school and high school kids because it has content that they can relate to. This book will show that friendship and family is the greatest gift in the whole world(s)!
This book took place in a foreign land when 5 kids get mysteriously washed up on the shore after they fell asleep on a boat. When one of the girls get taken, everyone has to save her with the help of their new friends. Not only that, but they have to get the 5 stones that can and will be used in the forces of evil if they don’t get them first.
I recommend this book to middle school and high school kids because it has content that they can relate to. This book will show that friendship and family is the greatest gift in the whole world(s)!
May 24, 2017
I actually stopped reading this book halfway through because I couldn't stand the writing style. The viewpoint characters' internal monologues are more like exposition than seeing from their eyes (although it's 3rd person omniscient, it's far removed from their perspectives most of the time, although that was inconsistent). The strangers they meet act erratically, and I felt that barely anyone's actions were sufficiently justified by the motivations the author gave, partly because something would happen, a person would act in a mysterious way, and then *afterward* throw out a sentence or three about why.
On top of that, I found the magic system derivative and limp when it was not vague. I found the main perspective character boring, and got sick of the continuous harping on his acceptance of how he is useless, his guilt at how his sibling continually shows initiative and takes action (and although that action is often rash and poorly thought out, it always manages to succeed, another pet peeve of mine). There are ways to be useful that don't involve physical feats of heroics, but the author didn't seem to think so. I presume that by the end of the story, the older boy starts doing things, and probably magically gets healthy or whatever, but I couldn't find it within me to care, if he didn't.
On top of that, I found the magic system derivative and limp when it was not vague. I found the main perspective character boring, and got sick of the continuous harping on his acceptance of how he is useless, his guilt at how his sibling continually shows initiative and takes action (and although that action is often rash and poorly thought out, it always manages to succeed, another pet peeve of mine). There are ways to be useful that don't involve physical feats of heroics, but the author didn't seem to think so. I presume that by the end of the story, the older boy starts doing things, and probably magically gets healthy or whatever, but I couldn't find it within me to care, if he didn't.
October 14, 2018
I loved this, and love even more that it's a Portland author. Will have to stop by the Audubon to get the 2nd and 3rd part!
July 5, 2025
This book started off strong. I thought the book cover was stunning!
I’m not much of a fantasy reader but this story was initially intriguing. I enjoyed the brother dynamic between Chase, Knox and Teddy. The transition to the fantasy world of Ayda was engaging. Then, there became too many introductions to new characters that affected my interest in the story. While there is a sequel, the ending really didn’t close in the way that I had hoped.
2/5 ⭐️
I’m not much of a fantasy reader but this story was initially intriguing. I enjoyed the brother dynamic between Chase, Knox and Teddy. The transition to the fantasy world of Ayda was engaging. Then, there became too many introductions to new characters that affected my interest in the story. While there is a sequel, the ending really didn’t close in the way that I had hoped.
2/5 ⭐️
December 7, 2024
I enjoyed this book. At times it was a bit confusing with all the strange names and places, but the story moves quickly and the characters are likeable. I would read the rest of the series. I filed this book under the prompt read a book with fog on the cover (hpootp 2024)
January 8, 2019
Amazing
January 14, 2025
I enjoyed it enough that I wish to read the 2nd and 3rd book
February 13, 2015
For the three Thompson brothers—asthmatic eldest Chase, charge-forward middle brother Knox, and lisping youngest Teddy—summer has always meant their mother’s old family summer house in Maine. This year they are joined by new neighbors Evelyn and Frankie, biracial sisters orphaned by the Haiti earthquake. Although forbidden to take the boat out when their parents are gone, due to their mother’s terror of the fog (she lost her own brother to it), Knox pushes it and the others eventually cave in. When the fog rises, they get lost, and find themselves beached on the shores of a strange and dangerous land, where the powerful “keepers” of three of its countries are in constant tension with Dankar, the keeper of the fourth. As the children struggle to comprehend the fantastical world in which they find themselves, Frankie gets kidnapped by Dankar’s forces. Is there any way to get her back? Can the children trust the keepers and peoples of the other lands to help them? Can they even trust each other? What is Dankar really after, anyway?
This is traditional high fantasy without any of the humor that makes Riordan’s and Rowling’s books so accessible and appealing to middle schoolers. It is dense, intensely thought-out, fairly derivative (but what fantasy isn’t?), overlong, action & violence-packed, and full of lush description. The characters are reasonably well defined, though I did often have trouble both pinning them down and liking them, as they continued to make stupid decisions and fight with each other ad nauseam. The tension between the brothers had a good basis—the younger one was disdainful that his older brother was weaker and needed defending—but the relationship was so capricious it seemed to me that the auther herself wasn’t really sure what it was, and I found that frustrating.
Also frustrating were the inconsistencies, such as switching POVs within a scene and having everyone in Ayda speak English. Also, the fog was supposed to make them forget their pasts, but that only happened when it was convenient for the plot—otherwise, they remembered everything from their prior lives just fine. Thirdly, the kids seemed to conquer every skill with amazing speed and ability. Would you really be able to ride a horse at a flat out gallop for something like 12 hours straight if you’d never ridden before? Even if the air of the land enhanced your healing abilities?
I also got frustrated with the constant stream of betrayals by friends, relatives, foes, selves, etc. I understand the author wanted to have a complex world and plot and for the kids to be off-balance, but it got to the point where I didn’t trust a single character even slightly, and at that point, why read further? I did like the point that one keeper made, about the kids being too willing to believe someone with power over them rather than themselves, to tell them what to do, but that didn’t help them at all because they had no idea what to do themselves and no survival skills.
The main issue with the book for me, though, was that the story didn’t really start until maybe page 50 or 60 or even further. There are really two totally different books here. The author started out writing what seemed to be a family summer story, about a family whose members had a lot of tension with each other, and who always went to a halcyon little town in Maine together. That could have been a perfectly fine story, but it didn’t match at all the high fantasy story, and the two stories are not likely to appeal to the same kids. She clearly wanted to write about her own summers in Maine and write a fantasy as well, so put them together rather than writing two different books. It would have been ideal to start the story with the kids lost on the boat, and fill in the backstory in bits as needed.
This is traditional high fantasy without any of the humor that makes Riordan’s and Rowling’s books so accessible and appealing to middle schoolers. It is dense, intensely thought-out, fairly derivative (but what fantasy isn’t?), overlong, action & violence-packed, and full of lush description. The characters are reasonably well defined, though I did often have trouble both pinning them down and liking them, as they continued to make stupid decisions and fight with each other ad nauseam. The tension between the brothers had a good basis—the younger one was disdainful that his older brother was weaker and needed defending—but the relationship was so capricious it seemed to me that the auther herself wasn’t really sure what it was, and I found that frustrating.
Also frustrating were the inconsistencies, such as switching POVs within a scene and having everyone in Ayda speak English. Also, the fog was supposed to make them forget their pasts, but that only happened when it was convenient for the plot—otherwise, they remembered everything from their prior lives just fine. Thirdly, the kids seemed to conquer every skill with amazing speed and ability. Would you really be able to ride a horse at a flat out gallop for something like 12 hours straight if you’d never ridden before? Even if the air of the land enhanced your healing abilities?
I also got frustrated with the constant stream of betrayals by friends, relatives, foes, selves, etc. I understand the author wanted to have a complex world and plot and for the kids to be off-balance, but it got to the point where I didn’t trust a single character even slightly, and at that point, why read further? I did like the point that one keeper made, about the kids being too willing to believe someone with power over them rather than themselves, to tell them what to do, but that didn’t help them at all because they had no idea what to do themselves and no survival skills.
The main issue with the book for me, though, was that the story didn’t really start until maybe page 50 or 60 or even further. There are really two totally different books here. The author started out writing what seemed to be a family summer story, about a family whose members had a lot of tension with each other, and who always went to a halcyon little town in Maine together. That could have been a perfectly fine story, but it didn’t match at all the high fantasy story, and the two stories are not likely to appeal to the same kids. She clearly wanted to write about her own summers in Maine and write a fantasy as well, so put them together rather than writing two different books. It would have been ideal to start the story with the kids lost on the boat, and fill in the backstory in bits as needed.
September 17, 2014
A note to authors out there: If you ever want me to read your Fantasy book, compare it to The Chronicles of Narnia. Seriously. When I saw that G.A. Morgan's new book was billed as "the next Narnia", I had to read it! Those books fueled my childhood imagination, and I've re-read them many times since then. I was excited to see where The Fog of Forgetting would fall for me in comparison, and anxious to be introduced to a new world.
That being said, there were plenty of things about this debut novel that I really did like. Starting with the setting. I can think of no better place to hide a new Fantasy world than off the banks of a summer lakehouse. I loved the fact that the characters had such an attachment to this seasonal destination. That there were memories, both good and bad, wrapped up in this place made it feel that much more real. It was a place of magic, and I completely believed that a new world could be hiding just beyond the horizon.
I also liked the characters, although they took me a while to warm up to. Chase, Knox and Teddy were a little much to handle at first. Well, in all fairness, they are three young boys. I suppose they'd be a lot to handle in real life! However it took me a while to see past their childishness. It wasn't until they actually arrived in the land of Ayda that I started to enjoy following them. Each boy soon came into his own, and they did grow a lot during their adventures. I have to admit that I still never really felt connected to them entirely though. I just never felt like I knew them well enough to be invested in their journey.
In terms of the world-building, Ayda wasn't quite what I expected. I loved the idea of a world surrounded by fog. Of a place where magic is commonplace. I was never able to actually place myself there, unfortunately. The concept of calling the magic that flowed through people "daylights" bothered me, especially since it was never explained. The other main problem was that most of the actual world descriptions are done through info-dumps. Even though they were masked as stories told by characters to our protagonists, they lost their magic. I never felt like I was in Ayda. Only that I was reading about it.
Still, I did enjoy the good majority of this read. The ending left me wanting a bit, but I'd be willing to continue on to see what happens next. This bookworm gives The Fog of Forgetting three stars. It wasn't quite Narnia, but I see potential in G.A. Morgan's new world.
That being said, there were plenty of things about this debut novel that I really did like. Starting with the setting. I can think of no better place to hide a new Fantasy world than off the banks of a summer lakehouse. I loved the fact that the characters had such an attachment to this seasonal destination. That there were memories, both good and bad, wrapped up in this place made it feel that much more real. It was a place of magic, and I completely believed that a new world could be hiding just beyond the horizon.
I also liked the characters, although they took me a while to warm up to. Chase, Knox and Teddy were a little much to handle at first. Well, in all fairness, they are three young boys. I suppose they'd be a lot to handle in real life! However it took me a while to see past their childishness. It wasn't until they actually arrived in the land of Ayda that I started to enjoy following them. Each boy soon came into his own, and they did grow a lot during their adventures. I have to admit that I still never really felt connected to them entirely though. I just never felt like I knew them well enough to be invested in their journey.
In terms of the world-building, Ayda wasn't quite what I expected. I loved the idea of a world surrounded by fog. Of a place where magic is commonplace. I was never able to actually place myself there, unfortunately. The concept of calling the magic that flowed through people "daylights" bothered me, especially since it was never explained. The other main problem was that most of the actual world descriptions are done through info-dumps. Even though they were masked as stories told by characters to our protagonists, they lost their magic. I never felt like I was in Ayda. Only that I was reading about it.
Still, I did enjoy the good majority of this read. The ending left me wanting a bit, but I'd be willing to continue on to see what happens next. This bookworm gives The Fog of Forgetting three stars. It wasn't quite Narnia, but I see potential in G.A. Morgan's new world.
July 24, 2014
This is a really wonderful story and it delivers in many ways and on many levels !! The chapters flow on in nice size chunks and it's not easy to put the book down once you start reading. I especially liked the details of the various lands beyond the fog and the subtly different ways and customs of the people living there. The characters really grow up alot in this story.
Rather than thinking they already know where the story is headed I hope instead that people will give the book some time to develop and reveal its secrets; there is so much under the surface of this book and it pays off in unexpected ways. The author G.A. Morgan has done a great job of creating excitement and mystery that you can get totally wrapped up in and the characters are the kind that you can really care about and root for. I will re-read this book sometime soon and know that the 2nd time through more hidden gems will be revealed. I liked the character of Frankie in particular and look forward to reading more of this adventure when the next book in this series comes out. This book will find its way into your heart and surprise you. Once you encounter this magic land you may find that you are thinking new thoughts and having fresh intuitions about the world that are far from ordinary. Five out of Five stars all the way !
Rather than thinking they already know where the story is headed I hope instead that people will give the book some time to develop and reveal its secrets; there is so much under the surface of this book and it pays off in unexpected ways. The author G.A. Morgan has done a great job of creating excitement and mystery that you can get totally wrapped up in and the characters are the kind that you can really care about and root for. I will re-read this book sometime soon and know that the 2nd time through more hidden gems will be revealed. I liked the character of Frankie in particular and look forward to reading more of this adventure when the next book in this series comes out. This book will find its way into your heart and surprise you. Once you encounter this magic land you may find that you are thinking new thoughts and having fresh intuitions about the world that are far from ordinary. Five out of Five stars all the way !
February 9, 2016
Reading a book should never be a chore. Following the story and the journey of the characters should be as easy as breathing and walking. With "The Fog of Forgetting", however, it felt like a chore. A lot of time is spent setting up characters and building backgrounds and worlds, with very little payoff. I wasn't enchanted by the atmosphere or empathetic with the characters. Their journey wasn't one that kept me engaged, which is a pity because on paper, this is the sort of book I should enjoy. Instead, reading it felt like a chore and I felt no love for the story, the setting, or the characters. Not a recommended read.
August 8, 2014
Really liked this fantasy about five young people who stumble onto a mysterious, fog-hidden island and are drawn into an ageless conflict over the Five Stones of Ayda. In the Tolkien tradition without being derivative. Beautifully written with great characters (the three Thompson kids, their two girl friends, the godlike holders of the Stones, the larger-than-life catlike and doglike sidekicks), a full and varied world, an intriguing plot.
September 1, 2014
3.5 stars
The start of a new trilogy that begins on the Maine coast and ends up in the fantastical land of Ayda. Three siblings and their two new friends of Haiti get lost in the fog when they are out boating; the island that they are washed up on is in another land, and a dangerous one. Loved the start of their adventure and the concept, my attention waned a bit in the middle before deepening again at the end.
The start of a new trilogy that begins on the Maine coast and ends up in the fantastical land of Ayda. Three siblings and their two new friends of Haiti get lost in the fog when they are out boating; the island that they are washed up on is in another land, and a dangerous one. Loved the start of their adventure and the concept, my attention waned a bit in the middle before deepening again at the end.
dnf
July 10, 2014I stopped this one at page 119. The magic system is pretty stereotypical and explained through info dumps. There were times when I enjoyed the writing but I also got annoyed by certain style choices, especially the magic being called a person's "daylights" without any explained reason.
May 10, 2015
Five adjective review: adventurious, page-turner, exciting, captivating, engaging! I will never look at the fog the same way again; I will now think of what may be beyond the fog. Can't wait for the next adventure for Chase, Knox, and friends. Will they remember and go back?
July 8, 2014
3.5/5 review to come
July 24, 2014
Review coming on August 4th when we cover this book over at The Book Bratz!
September 10, 2016
it was interesting especially since it was based in maine
December 10, 2014
I loved it, because I wrote it...
October 30, 2016
Fantasy adventure. 5 children sail through fog and end up in another land, one that is in the past as far as living conditions go. There is adventure, friendship, fighting.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews