The Hidden Land takes the premise of the first book, and makes everything bigger, the way a good sequel should. The stakes were higher, and the children were thrown entirely out of their elements - Ruth and Ted especially.All of them are so completely in over their heads that their main goal is n...
The Third and Final book of the Secret Country Trilogy! Three things have the power to destroy the Secret Country: the Border Magic, the Crystal of Earth, and the whim of the dragon. The cousins Ted, Laura, Ruth, Patrick, and Ellen have faced the first two; now, summoned back to the Secret Coun...
All right, this is technically a recent re-read, as I have read this book more times than I can count. I think the last time, though, may well have been ten or twelve years ago, when I was writing my own “children from our world are whisked away to another, which only they can save” book. Halfway...
Gah!!I almost never give 1 star to books I've actually finished, because they're bound to have some redeeming quality that will at least bring the rating up to 2. But the best I can say about this one is that it's not offensive--in fact, I share many of the author's opinions--and that the prose w...
The bookshelves of young fantasy are overcrowded, with increasingly fierce competetion, but The Secret Country deserves a far better place than it currently has. I remember when I last reread the trilogy, the name "The Dubious Hills" cracked me up. It was such a deliberate name and went along wit...