Krishna
Erec Rex has magical things with him, He is in his teens and lives with his mother June O’Hara and siblings but they keep moving and keep getting poorer. He and his siblings were adopted by their mother and were very different.
Erec has a glass eye; he also has a special power. He feels compelled to act and when he does, he finds that he has saved a person from harm. He is worried that he may one day be compelled to do things to harm people, because he seems to have no control to resist when the urge takes over.
Now suddenly he gets the urge to go find his mother and take a picture of her when he goes. He kind of intuits that his mother has gotten lost, and will not be coming back.
But he is stopped from leaving by a housekeeper. The kids distract her and he runs away. He goes around town showing his mother’s picture which elicits a surprise from one of the newsstand men and his little girl.
She meets him later and introduces herself as Bethany Evirly. The Uncle who was rough with him was Uncle Earl. She says that Erec’s mother went to the ‘underground place’ that morning! She happened to be watching when she entered the place.
They pay the fees and bluster past the corn dog seller who operates the opening; they find a whole city underground with a train station rivaling Grant Central.
They find many odd things there, and odd people there. The story keeps rollicking forward. Some people seem to be effortlessly flying, and some doors suddenly appear before him in thin air; they enter and then the doors also disappear.
When they meet a group of kids, the friendly Oscar and the indifferent Lucas, they learn that they – Bethany and Erec – are ‘Losers’ and the locals are ‘Keepers’. The losers have a large ‘L’ on their forehead that is visible only to the keepers. Oscar gives them hat to hide the ‘L’ until they fade away after a while and tells them that they are near an arena where the competition is to happen. The winner of the competition will be the new King or Queen as the current King Pietr is childless (both his kids having died) and does not want to rule anymore. With him are King Pluto and Queen Posey who are rulers of different kingdoms in the underground world. The people ‘up there’ – losers – also had magic earlier but then they lost it and it is said that the magic should NOT be restored to them because they will not use it for the good of others.
Meanwhile, Erec meets his mother psychically – wearing his ‘special’ glasses that his mother had left behind – and sees that she is in a comfortable place. When she calls out to her, she is startled. She says that she is in prison and made it look good by her magic. She asks him to go see Pietr if possible so that she can be released.
Erec is supposed to call himself Rick Ross and say he is from the same world in a populous city. His mom is surprised to hear that King Pietr was ‘not himself’ and seemed incoherent.
There is a race which Erec and Bethany finish and qualify for the second round. It features questions at each fork and only the right answers may take you forward. If wrong, you come back and attempt again. You use a hat that makes you invisible to come back. (Naturally, Erec and Bethany steal two of them and keep it with them. )
The odd thing is that the ‘truth revealing’ machine seems to show a photo of Erec that seems to surprise Queen xxx but Erec has no clue why. They also find a maze where the guards have tied a live hungry Minotaur.
June, knowing that King Pietr cannot help, asks Erec to wear magic sneakers and make a potion to take her out of prison. (Yes, it is that kind of a story. Initially it feels odd like you are reading a children’s book but the story gets much better. Kaza Kingsley definitely knows how to compose intricate plots and tie them up later nicely). He agrees.
He goes and collects a ‘sneaking’ shoe and a lot of money from where his mom said they would be. He also was almost caught and escaped by luck.
There is another loop there. At the end of the first contest, someone tried to sabotage the contest by releasing a rhinoceros (which was in an “anibal”); Erec’s aniball gave him a friendly dog and Bethany’s gave her a kitten. In addition, the hungry Minataur was also released. In trying to control the rhino with his ‘gorgon eyes’ hidden on his wrist, the authorities also froze a couple of boys’ legs. So you know someone does not like this to continue. As an aside that is not relevant in this story, it turns out that the dog is a Werewolf and so he names it Wolfboy. The cat is named Cutie Pie and it can talk, when the mood strikes her.
The same thing repeats after the second round of contest (which Bethany and Erec won – they are silly logic puzzles this time). After that the ninety three winners are all invited to the prize room where they can hold a Inquizzle and it will answer one question. Erec learns that his birth mother is alive! But they are all afflicted by attack fleas.
They go in search of gunpowder to the armory (finding out where the armory is by a ‘silly trick’ played on the chef in the cafeteria, and then while there, invisible, discover a plot by someone and Rayson to have the ‘favoured three’ win the competition, get the scepter and then take over all the kingdoms. The duo is there to collect arms and gunpowder ahead of time to be prepared to overthrow the trio of kings.
The story moves on, and the thing that elevates this to a level higher than the kid stuff is how the author ties all the ends neatly at the end. There are several revelations.
You also get the feeling that Kaza is planning a long series and some of what is in this book is just set up to be used in sequels. For instance – Wolfboy is ready for a future adventure, I am sure. Some more are there, which we can discuss later.
They go through another competition with three parts to it, which Erec wins. For the final competition, Bethany unscrambles a coded message and Erec saves King Pluto with Pluto’s own scepter by destroying a large boulder falling onto the King. (One thing that does not make sense in this case is why was a boulder coming down on King Pluto. OK, not all loose ends are tied up, I guess.)
In their off time they go collecting the ingredients. Erec manages to save all the kids from a poisonous gas. He is now sure that the evil trio are trying to eliminate competition by foul means to increase their already biased odds of winning the competition.
Erec next goes to the dungeon to rescue his mother and faces multiple obstacles. First Ugry is behind him trying to thwart him. Second there are destroyers who come out of the walls with mouths open and poisonous lava. Thanks to his mother’s instructions, he deals with them with a wooden arm and lots of paper (Don’t ask). Then there are shadow demons who play with the mind, and Erec, even though warned by his mom, falls prey.
He seems to have been saved by someone and recovers in a hospital. He then finds out that the explosion worked and his mom was free and back in Upper Earth.
His mom now asks him to go and win the competition. He goes to a dragon to recover the eye that it is guarding (‘Dragon’s Eye’ thus justifying the title) and learns surprising things from the dragon about himself.
The story ends with many surprising twists – King Pietr, as we suspected, was drugged and subdued. We learn by whom. We also learn who tried to kill Erec before his memory was erased and altered. We get to know who the real culprit helping Balthasar (the evil one) is.
But many things are not resolved well. The King who was a traitor and his assistant simply vanish (waiting for the sequel?) It is not explained what happened to King Pietr’s triplets who had vanished (and announced killed). So many things left unsaid.
There is another weird chapter at the end titled ‘Bonus Chapter’. This is about Jesper Konungsson, who was elected as the UN’s President and the same day got the news that his wife and daughter was dead in a car accident. This again is purely a setup for a sequel and can be safely ignored without any loss of understanding of the current story.
Knowing the deft plotting visible in this book, I know Kaza has deliberately left these vague so that you will go and read the sequels!
Whether you do or not, this one is a good and entertaining joyride. For that alone, this deserves a 7/10. I cannot in good conscience award more due to the unnecessary details intended for future installments.
— Krishna