2 out of 4 stars
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Julu (The Julu Series, Book #1) by Jan Anderegg is the story of the magical land of Jirvania, the home of all imagination, and its protectors. When the evil Kor launches his Spore army against the land of Jirvania, he wins, killing everyone except Karel, the Protector of the Great Library, whom he has chained on Muse Mountain to watch the complete destruction of Jirvania and everything Karel has ever loved. Luluana, the Dog Star, and heavenly protector of Jirvania and its inhabitants, comes down and gives Karel a chance to change the story.
Thus begins the story of Jack and Mia, cousins, and the latest generation of the royal family of Jirvania. They have been raised in the World Beyond (our world), not knowing who they are. When they are twelve years old, the spore army finds their families, and Jack and Mia must run for their lives. Luckily, one of the gifts provided by Luluana was an egg that would hatch in their hour of greatest need. Julu, a dragon, is hatched at the same time the kids’ mothers are fighting off spores and telling the kids to run.
Julu (the dragon) takes the children on an adventure through time in order to keep them safe. Julu (the book) tells the story not only of the children, but of their parents, other allies, and even some enemies. It jumps through time showing the story as it was, and how it is being changed.
Julu is somewhat hard for me to review. My first thought is to tell Jan Anderegg to get an editor – not a copy editor (the copy editing was fine, not perfect, but nothing that was actually a problem), but a developmental editor. You see Julu is a lower middle grade story in content. Amazon has it classified in their children’s sections. But it is over 300 pages long in the print edition. That is way too long for readers of this age.
In addition, all the time jumps are incredibly confusing. And this is something an author should realize when they need to start every single chapter with a time stamp, and explanation of how far in the past it is, and if there was a jump from the previous chapter. And almost each of those time jumps brings more characters into the story. But because there is time travel by characters, the reader cannot even be certain what time they are in by the characters, or the age of the characters, in the story.
As an adult, I was able to enjoy the story, though I recognized the simplicity of the themes. In Julu, there is good, and there is evil. The bad guys are bad simply because they are bad. There is very little nuance. In the entire book, there are only two characters who are not totally good or totally bad. And they are the two characters who get a redemption arc, so basically, they are moving from totally bad to totally good, and they actually have pretty short journeys, generally with one single moment of recognition needed to move them from one side of the scale to the other.
But I am not surprised that this book is having difficulty find its audience. The story is written for younger children, but the book is too long, with too may characters, and too many time jumps, for a middle grade reader to really follow on their own. And by the time a reader is going to be comfortable keeping those complexities in their head, the story is too simple to hold their interest.
In the end, I would have to give this book a rating of two out of four stars. I feel a little bad about this. I love the concept of The Great Library, a place that can literally take a person inside their favorite books and stories, and where great creators from all over time come to hear stories read to them. And the battle to keep imagination alive for children is certainly a relevant one. At the same time, the strict gender roles of the characters bothered me. It was not overt, but, with the exception of Jack and Mia, all other groups split along gender lines – mother has important things to say to her daughters. Father has important things to say to his sons-in-law. Men catch fish. Women make dinner to go with that fish.
And because of these things, no matter how wonderful the concept behind the story is, I cannot think of a single person I would recommend this story to. Instead, I find myself wanting to recommend a good developmental editor to the author, so that the next book in the series might be able to reach its potential and its target audience.
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Julu
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