Keeper of the Lost Cities

Author: Shannon Messenger
Illustrator: (Cover) Jason Chan

© Date: 2012
Publisher: Aladdin
Pages: 488
Chapters: Yes
Illustrations: No
Publisher Recommended Age: 8-12 years
Bonus Activities at End of Book: No

Summary from Book: Twelve-year-old Sophie Foster has a secret. She is a Telepath, and has a unique ability to hear the thoughts of everyone around her-something that she’s never known how to explain, and has made her an outcast, even in her own family. But everything changes the day she meets Fitz, a mysterious boy who appears out of nowhere and also reads minds. She discovers there’s somewhere she does belong, and staying where she is will put her in grave danger. In the blink of an eye, Sophie is forced to leave behind everything and start a new life in a place that is vastly different from her own.

Sophie has new rules and skills to learn, and not everyone is thrilled with her “homecoming.” There are secrets buried deep in Sophie’s memory, secrets that other people desperately want.

Would even kill for…

Page Pig Thoughts: Admittedly, I picked this one off the shelf because it was nice and thick, so I wouldn’t have to write a review for a bit. Joke was on me, I had a hard time putting it down, so I finished it earlier than I had thought. The big question of what is in Sophie’s past starts early and keeps you flipping pages. Then the big action starts and you keep flipping pages.

This story has elements reminiscent of other big ones. The highly skilled character leaving everything that they know to go to a school and hone their skills reminded me of Harry Potter. The many different crush/love interest prospects similar to Twilight. And I laugh as I type that the elves are good looking, similar to the Lord of the Rings elves. While parts of it may remind you of other stories, this one draws you into its world all on its own and the story line/action will keep you reading. Not quite sure why this one drew me in so much, maybe it is a type of story that I have always enjoyed, but I appreciated being absorbed in a longer novel.

There are definitely factors throughout the story that could be deemed creepy/disturbing or maybe utopian, depending on your perspective. The registration necklace that tracks your location everywhere, DNA used to unlock things as simple as a locker, the job/society rank depending on your birth given skills, elves being able to put thoughts in your mind, and other elves being able to wash memories from your mind, etc. The manipulating group even has a way to unlock Sophie’s DNA coded locker, so DNA is not entirely private because it can be used against you. Elf society does not necessarily seem ideal to me, but I could see a reader getting that feeling. The underlying themes and arrangement of elf society would make an interesting discussion for what makes an ideal societal structure. Ultimately, these themes are not forefront in the story, but they should not be ignored when deciding if your child is ready for this type of story.

Use caution with younger or sensitive readers, the subject matter may be a bit intense.

Family Unit:

Sophie Foster lived at home with her human mother, father, and younger sister. When she leaves to live with the elves, she stays with Grady and Edaline Ruewen while they determine if an adoption works for all of them.
Alden and Della are the parents of Fitz and Biana. There is also an older brother that I can’t remember the name of that makes an appearance near the end.
Dex lives with his mother, father, and younger sibling triplets.

Conflict/Social Issues:

Sophie doesn’t know her past or how information got into her head. If someone asked her about the information hidden there, she wouldn’t know. The information just seeps out while she goes about her life.
Sophie is trying to learn a whole new way of life, but gets tripped up on rules that she is unaware of.
Dex has a chip on his shoulder about Fitz, which irritates Sophie because she is friends with both of them.
An attempt is made to kidnap Sophie at the beginning of the story, and a successful kidnapping happens near the end of the story.
Sophie is forced to see how humans live and see potential flaws in the system, but she also questions a few elf things.

Positive Items:

Sophie is resilient and stays calm enough to think her way out of tricky situations.
Elves have all sorts of interesting technologies and abilities that make you ponder what the mind is really capable of doing.
Sophie develops new abilities at just the right times to find success in various situations.
The story is fast paced and has lots of depth to the characters. Plenty of things to keep curiosity going throughout the story.

Items of Interest:

Major characters – Sophie is the main character. Fitz is an older student with higher telepathy skills than elves his age usually have, he watches out for Sophie after he brought her from the human cities. Dex is in Sophie’s grade, he is good with alchemy and technology, he is best friends with Sophie. Marella is another of Sophie’s friends, she rescued Sophie from social suicide on her first day because Sophie sat with the “drooly boys.” Biana is Fitz’s younger sister, she initially is not nice to Sophie, but becomes good friends with her. Keefe is the school’s bad boy of sorts, he has an untucked shirt and mussed hair, he skipped a grade due to his photographic mind, he consistently ditches class and skates by, but is an empath and watches out for Sophie. Stina is the mean girl of school, she constantly tries to make everyone feel badly, she and Dex play mean pranks on each other.
Dex has a thing against Fitz, he calls him Wonderboy. Not really sure how Fitz feels about Dex, but he does get a little stiff when Sophie “introduces” him to Dex, then calls him “Deck.”
Sophie has a nervous/anxious habit of pulling out eyelashes.
Sophie doesn’t feel like she fits in in the human world and longs to have real friends.
Sophie started hearing other people’s thoughts at the age of 5 after she had some sort of head injury that put her in the hospital. All of the noise gives her headaches. Later we learn that humans have simple minds, so their thoughts are loud and grating. Elven minds are quieter, so Sophie doesn’t have the headache problems around them.
Sophie is a human prodigy and is in high school at the age of 12. She has a photographic memory. We later learn that elf minds are much more advanced than human minds, so it is easy for her to be ahead.
Fitz finds Sophie on a field trip at the museum. He tells her that she is an elf and takes her to Shangri-la/Eternalia and Lumenaria for the first time. He then takes her back to her human home. She gets in trouble with her parents for missing the bus back home from the field trip.
All intelligent creatures signed a treaty of peace. Humans decided that they wanted to rule everything, so the other creatures exited and left humans to their own means. The sinking of Atlantis was staged so that humans wouldn’t go looking for it, but like all of the other lost cities, it is still on earth. The other creatures comment on how well that is working out for humans. At the end of the book, we learn that there was an underground faction of elves that wanted to sequester/exile humans to a certain location because they are trashing the earth for all of the other creatures. Another underground faction of elves seem to be intent to keep humans safe from the other group. Human cities are now forbidden cities that elves are not supposed to go to because humans are to be left to themselves, only elves with certain classifications are able to go.
Elves light leap, which means travel using light. They need to learn proper focus before being allowed to leap without protection devices. Without focus, an elf can fade away, which is basically dying.
Fitz comes to see Sophie again at school. She gets in trouble with her parents for ditching school.
Fitz takes Sophie to meet his father, Alden. Sophie learns that she cannot go back to living in the human world, she belongs with the elves. The plan was for her death to be faked so that her human parents will not continue looking for her. Sophie imagines their pain, so even though it is harder for her, she requests that their memories be erased like she never existed. Sophie visits her human family one last time. After telling them that she loves them, she winds up using sleeping gas so that they will let her leave. She then crumples to the ground in tears. Fitz has to pull her up. After asking if the small bag of stuff is really all that she wants to take with her, he then dashes back in to grab Ella the stuffed elephant because Sophie forgot it. The pair leave. After seeing crying Sophie, Fitz understands how hard it was for Sophie to leave everything that she knew behind.
Sophie was tired of hiding her telepathic abilities around humans, so she was looking forward to being herself. She is disappointed to learn that she needs to hide her telepathic abilities around elves because elves don’t usually have abilities at her age. She does not want to keep hiding. At the end of the story, all of the elves learn of her abilities due to the kidnapping/funeral events.
Sophie has a fear of doctors, but she has a knack for needing to see the elf doctor, Elwin. She sees him many times and he heals her many times. He even brings her back from near death. She finds his treatments are not as scary as the human doctor treatments.
Sophie had an allergic reaction to a mystery substance while living with her human family. She went to the hospital and had tubes and such hooked up to her. She has an allergic reaction to an elf concoction that is supposed to relax her mind. Elves don’t have allergic reactions, but Elwin manages to bring her back to normal. She then has to carry around an emergency potion. The speculation is that since her mind works differently than other elves, that substance doesn’t work the same with her.
Sophie has some classes that she excels in and others, like alchemy, that she struggles in. She struggles to unlearn everything that she learned in human classes and accept that the mind has limitless possibilities along with lots of other concepts being wrong.
Many students feel a lot of pressure to stay at Foxfire because losing your place there means going to a lesser school and losing potential societal status and lesser job potential. Getting good grades and having an ability/skill manifest are keys to staying at Foxfire.
All students at Foxfire are called prodigies. All classes are just one student and one mentor/teacher.
Not many people in school were interested in being around Sophie. But once word got out that Sophie inadvertently lit a teacher’s cape on fire, she becomes popular and lots of people start talking with her. I would say that her mistake brought out her human side, but that feels like an oddly twisted comment for this story, so maybe her mistake made her relatable.
Sophie is concerned about her midterms, particularly in alchemy. She asks Dex to tutor her since he is the best alchemist that she knows. They work together a lot after school, Sophie still sets stuff on fire accidentally.
Elves live for a very long and unknown time. All elves are given a large sum of money at birth, enough for life. They work a job based on the ability that they developed. If they never developed a talent, they are part of the working class. Having an ability, particularly a rare one, places them in the nobility. Since elves live forever, this system is supposed to be optimal.
Elves laugh about the simplicity of humans and their silly notions.
Elves are appalled that humans eat animals.
Elves have a registry ID necklace they they wear at all times so that they can be located, if needed.
Elf telepaths learn how to block their thoughts from others reading them. If they are really skilled, they are asked to keep secrets that cannot be written down.
Elves have all of the species of the world, so humans did not render any extinct. That means that even dinosaurs live in their part of the world.
Bronte, an elf on the council is of the “ancients,” does not like the idea of Sophie at all. He is a vote on the council that determines if she will be allowed to stay at Foxfire (the school she was attending), but Sophie knows that he does not like her. Her fear of Bronte guides some of her choices and fears throughout the story. At the end, her newfound inflicting ability means that Bronte will be her mentor in the next school session, which terrifies Sophie.
Dex’s parents are a “bad match,” which is an insult. DNA is evaluated to determine if you are a good biologic match so that offspring can be optimal. His parents apparently didn’t care what the DNA said and had offspring anyway. That is why Dex has younger sibling triplets instead of just single birth siblings.
Sophie goes to live with Grady and Edaline Ruewen. Their daughter died in a tragic fire accident at a young age, they do not want to talk about it. Sophie understands what death/mourning is like because it is a very human thing, but elves do not understand because it is so rare. Sophie says that she had to listen to her human mother’s thoughts while she was mourning the death of her mother. Grady and Edaline hadn’t really been leaving their house after the death of their daughter.
Grady and Edaline run an animal healing center/sanctuary.
Student lockers are opened by licking a plate which reads each student’s DNA.
For students that haven’t discovered their special ability yet, they take ability detection class. The students are put through various stressful situations because sometimes abilities, like being a froster (freezing things), present themselves when someone is under stress. In the case of a froster, that means that the students were put in a super hot, oven like environment for a long duration to see if any would present the rare ability. Students feel a lot of pressure to manifest an ability due to the importance for future societal rank, but having an ability is just something you are or are not born with. While the ability can be forced out, if you weren’t born with one, it won’t be forced out and you will likely go to the lesser school and be just part of the “working class.”
Sophie gets super nervous about passing midterms and reads Lady Galvin’s mind without permission to learn what is on the midterm. She confesses and volunteers herself to serve detention for a week. She winds up serving her detention with Keefe, who is a regular. Detention means various teachers selecting activities for the students, some are better than others.
Many crushes are present in the story. Sophie has a crush on Fitz. At times it seems Fitz may have a crush on Sophie, and while he looks out for her, we aren’t really sure if he has a crush on Sophie. Dex has a crush on Sophie. Keefe has a crush on Sophie. Valin (a nerdy, drooling boy) has a crush on Sophie. There may be others in the Sophie Foster fan club.
After midterms, all of the students leave presents for each other while the parents are having conferences with teachers/mentors.
Many girls have a crush on Fitz and Keefe, Sophie gets the stink eye when leaving midterm presents for them. Fitz gives everyone the same present. After all of the time spent picking the proper present for him, Sophie is a little let down.
Sophie helps out Grady and Edaline by realizing that a flying dinosaur (Grady didn’t realize that it was a flamedon) was cold and needed fire to warm up. Sophie being around the fire freaked out Edaline since her daughter died by fire. After that, Edaline and by extension, Grady, want to keep Sophie inside where she will be safe. Sophie gets upset and says that she can’t be kept indoors in fear that everything is unsafe. Edaline acknowledges that is true, but can’t help herself. At one point, I think Grady says, “we are your guardians and you will do what we say.” Sophie stops talking to Grady and Edaline, she also avoids them.
A scroll arrives for Grady. Sophie is home along and does her best not to peak. Her pet imp steals the scroll, which tears off a piece. Sophie then sees that Grady and Edaline took back their request to adopt her. Sophie gets angry and pulls back from them even more. She even rips the family crest off her school uniform.
Sophie has knowledge in her brain that she doesn’t know how it got there. Most of it is secrets, like a complex formula for how to make certain kind of fire. A certain group of underground people is interested in the information. The information randomly comes up as she is going about life.
An underground group seems intent on getting Sophie exiled. Illegal items keep finding their way into Sophie’s possession. She also was getting manipulated to go to the forbidden human cities.
The speculative story that Alden offers – Sophie does not have biologic parents per se. Her DNA has been altered and she was Project Moonlark, which meant that she was like the moonlark egg that floated across the water to grow up on its own. Sophie’s human parents had problems conceiving, so they went to a fertility doctor. The fertility doctor, likely an elf, planted an embryo into Sophie’s mother. Sophie then grew up with humans. At the end of the story, we learn that an elf was living next door keeping a watch on her, but that elf seemed to be in the faction trying to save humans from exile.
Sophie’s enhanced DNA gives her early abilities, telepathy at age 5, able to project thoughts to animals, a polyglot (able to speak any language fluently without training), and an inflictor (cause pain in others using her mind). She is able to do things with her mind that other elves are not capable of doing.
Prentice, an elf, was hiding information in his mind about Black Swan, an underground elf faction. Because he would not give up the information, the elf council ordered a memory break. His mind was then broken into by a telepath who rummaged around for the information and made Prentice lose his mind before he was exiled. Prentice’s wife was distraught and lost her concentration light leaping and faded away. Their child was left an orphan, Tiergan took him in. Tiergan had argued on Prentice’s behalf because he had a family to take care of, Alden carried out the memory break order from the Council. Tiergan then stepped down from the council and from mentoring students. He reluctantly took on Sophie when she came to be a student at Foxfire. Tiergan was sought out for her because he is the best telepathy mentor. As it turns out, Sophie’s location was the secret that Prentice was keeping. Tiergan enjoys mentoring Sophie and admires how much she excels at everything.
Biana, Fitz’s younger sister, initially was not kind to Sophie. She later asks Sophie over to hang out at her house and they become friends. Sophie is upset to later learn that Biana initially asked her over because Alden had told her to become friends to keep Sophie closer. Sophie could then be observed at their house.
Sophie takes an illegal trip to the forbidden human cities to collect a sample of the fire type that is burning around many cities. She uses the illegal items that the underground manipulating elf group sent her. She collects her sample with the help of the flamedon and proves that an elf started the fires that are killing humans.
Sophie and Dex are kidnapped. Their hands and feet are bound, they are blind folded, they are drugged/sedated. They are gone from home for over a week. Their deaths were faked by their registry necklaces being tossed into the ocean. Dex wasn’t supposed to be kidnapped, he just was in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the kidnappers has fire abilities and burns Sophie’s arms while information is trying to be extracted from her brain. The kidnappers have secret stones that enable them to travel to the forbidden cities.
Dex tries to rescue Sophie, but winds up whacked by a weapon. Sophie looks over to see his limp and unconscious body, which spurs anger and sparks her new inflicting ability. She then inflicts pain onto the kidnappers which crumples them to the ground and she escapes with Dex.
Sophie winds up in two tribunals, which is the council of elves evaluating the wrongdoing of an elf that broke a law. The first is closed to the public. The first one was for collecting light from a star that only high up elves were supposed to know about and no one was to collect light from. Sophie just knew where it was, so she was deemed innocent enough. The second tribunal was open to the public and looked into Sophie breaking the law by going into the human cities to collect a fire sample. The council decided that she was wrong, but they were also wrong because they didn’t protect her from harm (kidnapping). So that was a wash. Then there was a decision if she could stay at the school that she had been attending. Alden helps her stay in school by finding a loop, of sorts, in the rules for attending.
After being at Sophie’s funeral and Sophie coming back from her kidnapping, Edaline and Grady realize how much they care for/love Sophie. They are open to adopting Sophie again, but understand if she doesn’t want to live with them again. In the end, Sophie chooses them over Alden and Della. She knows that she will never be their lost daughter and that they will never be her lost parents, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t good for each other.
This story seems like it would allow lots of interesting book discussions. Like considering the different elf abilities (telepath, empath, conjuring, invisibility, etc) – which one would you want? Are some like a froster really useless? What rules do you think are necessary for safety?

Other Books in Series (At Time of Posting):

There are over 10 books in this series