Kingdom Keepers I: Disney After Dark

Disneeeeeey 8D Yay. I liked this book. Mostly for the accurate (though somewhat dated) representation of the parks. Pearson does a good job setting up locations and thus letting readers go to Disney World whenever they want. I enjoyed mentions of Walt, specific attractions (not just the most popular ones), and nods at the hidden areas of the parks. You can tell the author is a huge Disnerd.

I also enjoyed the Park-comes-to-life at night plot. It seems off to me though that so far everything that has come to life has been malicious. I wonder if any of the park's characters will be allies in future volumes instead of everyone trying to attack the kids? Although, I did enjoy the image of evil It's A Small World dolls.

The weak point of this first book was definitely the characters. They seem rather flat unfortunately, and I couldn't quite get into them. I couldn't even really develop a mental image of them because there's so little focus on developing their appearances and personalities. From what I can tell: Finn is the everyman, Willa leans more toward being a tomboy while Charlene is more girly is nervous, Philby is probably more nerdy and Maybeck is a tough guy?? I don't even know. And then there's Amanda and Jess/Jez who were basically just plot devices. I got kinda creeped out by Finn's mini-harem, all the girls (except maybe Willa) seemed to flirt with him at some point. It seemed like the author was trying to force chemistry when there was none. I would have really liked it if he spent more time developing the protagonists in future books.

Also, I enjoyed the fact that he chose Maleficent as the antagonist but her being defeated by pens was rather silly. Also, the fact that the book shies away from mentions of death and explicit violence tells me this is going to be a pretty vanilla series. (As expected from Disney I suppose). This disappoints me a little bit because I'm a strong believer that kid's can handle the dark stuff, just look at Animorphs.

Anyway, I look forward to being transported back to Disney again in book 2. This time, I hope, with stronger character development.