Review: Beyonders: A World Without Heroes by Brandon Mull

From Goodreads:  "Jason Walker has often wished his life could be a bit less predictable--until a routine day at the zoo ends with Jason suddenly transporting from the hippo tank to a place unlike anything he's ever seen. In the past, the people of Lyrian welcomed visitors from the Beyond, but attitudes have changed since the wizard emperor Maldor rose to power. The brave resistors who opposed the emperor have been bought off or broken, leaving a realm where fear and suspicion prevail.

In his search for a way home, Jason meets Rachel, who was also mysteriously drawn to Lyrian from our world. With the help of a few scattered rebels, Jason and Rachel become entangled in a quest to piece together the word of power that can destroy the emperor, and learn that their best hope to find a way home will be to save this world without heroes."

For Spring break my child was reading Book 3 in the Fabelhaven series, I was a little worried that we would run out of reading material, so I picked up Beyonders in paperback just in case.  It's one of the fun things about going on vacation I get to peruse the MG titles newly released at the bookstores.  

Beyonders  is a quest story where Jason must recover the parts of a word to help him destroy Emperor Maldor.  Rachel joins Jason on his quest mostly to try and find a way home for herself.  She has a pretty secondary role in this book, but I think that will change with the next book in the series.    They both kinda grew on me throughout the book.  At first they are so focused on getting home and finding the pieces of the word. Their quest puts them in some interesting situations where they have to use physical and intellectual skills versus magical ones in order to get out of them,  and the pacing kept things moving along, two things that I really liked. And the characters they meet along the way, some are quirky and interesting and others are down right evil, and you can never be sure if they are helping or hindering Jason and Rachel.  Most of all, I like how Jason and Rachel come to realize that they care about the people of Lyrian and want to help them get out from under Maldor's rule and they need to be heroes if not to save Lyrian but to also get home.  Overall, a wonderful quest adventure story with the bonus of a  scene chapter at the end of the book (that will play a part in the next book, Seeds of Rebellion),  as well as a sneak peak at Five Kingdoms which released in March.