"For fans of the Harry Potter crowd"

In Breakwater, California, thirteen year old Alison "Ali" Warner knows her protesting the cutting down of trees means nothing to the lumber industry, but feels she must do so anyway. After Ali buys a sub to take with her on her trek up the mountainside, three foot Paddy O'Connell accosts her trying to sell her all sorts of items that he obviously has no idea what they do. She says no, but gives him her sandwich only to realize later that he picked her pocket stealing her money.

On the mountain, monsters attack Ali, who finds shelter only to have cave-in trap her. She barely escapes, but soon learns why she has become the focus of weird beings who want her dead. Ali has learned her heritage from her deceased mother is that she is a fairy princess whose two worlds are in peril from dwarves and elves. Besides that threat, if she wants to gain her fairy powers, which she needs to survive, she must pass the tests of seven deadly challenges and meet head-on the Kings of the Dwarves and Elves.

This engaging coming of age fantasy is targeted towards the Harry Potter crowd. Ali is a delightful protagonist who feels obligated to help improve life around her so makes the ideal teen to take on the mantle of saving two realms. The mythological races seem genuine whether they rally around their champion heroine or try to kill her as an enemy threat to invasion plans. Though the tale slows down in between major events (feels padded perhaps to have enough pages for the advertised older crowd), young readers will enjoy the antics of the younger Buffy-like heroine.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted June 15, 2004

Summary

Every young girl dreams that she's secretly a princess of a far-off land and that someday her true parents will come to claim her and usher her into a life of luxury, an fabulous existence where she might even have magical powers and be swept off her feet by a handsome prince. Teenager Ali Warner has reason to cling to such a fantasy. Her mother died in a car accident a year ago. Her father, a trucker determined to work through his grief, hasn't acknowledged Ali's burgeoning figure or complicated emotions. Her friends still aren't sure how to talk about her mother's death. And the Southern California forest that has always been Ali's refuge is about to be ravaged by logging. Ali is about to discover that she is a princess-a fairy princess. And that she has to save the world. For real. To claim her fairy powers, Ali must overcome seven potentially lethal challenges. Then she must scale a mountain and confront the King of the Dwarves and the King of the Elves, whose armies are poised to invade Earth. With her bemused 21st century friends, a sly leprechaun, and an extremely loyal, extremely ugly, troll by her side, Ali begins the most momentous journey of her young life, a journey during which she will learn much about herself and the past she thought she knew. She will conquer fire and water, earth and air, and even time itself. She will be both betrayer and betrayed, will see death close at hand, and will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Ali Warner is Alosha. Welcome to her world.