Double Dragon Press, 2005

ISBN: 155404269

Genre: Young Adult

The following review was contributed by:  CAROLYN HOWARD-JOHNSON &CLICK TO VIEW  Carolyn  Howard-Johnson's Reviews

Fantasy Sequel May Subconsciously Teach a Love of Language

Ahhh. The legend continues. In The Return of the Golden Age, our hero Wiley is charged to reveal the secrets of their own heritage to the people he was born of.  They, a charmed race, now live in a poverty stricken village. It will not be easy.  He must first hide his six young friends and then introduce them without rousing suspicion. It is a job similar to convincing a modern--but backward--population of Atlantis' reality.

In this, Marilyn Peake's third book, young readers are the beneficiaries of the author's ingenious description of undersea life as they were in the others. We see eels and turtles and even talking porpoises and whales. Still she somehow creates them as real, breathing animals; they maintain the personalities we, as humans, sense they have and though the colors and shapes of the fish swimming by seem dreamlike, anyone who has snorkeled will know them intimately.

Marilyn's Peake's language is up to the task of creating fantasy from our real world. When Peake says, "...as the moon rose higher in the sky, it lit up the edges of the trees, illuminating them with a gentle white glow. It reminded Wiley of his mother lighting candles at night…" a young reader will accept the simile and also come to love the music of language, the images it creates and its ability to enchant.

This trilogy's mantra is indeed fitting: "Drink deeply by land or sea. Earth comes only once."