Keeper of the lost cities is one of my favorite books and at the end of the first book, I started thinking Keeper of the lost cities is far better than Harry potter. By the end of the first few chapters the book was almost emotionally connected with me. At one point I got so obsessed that I accidentally started believing that some of the abilities the characters possess can be adopted by us. The book is more philosophical and mature compared to many books with similar plot such as Harry Potter. This book may not have intended to be that way, but it is, which is one of my main reasons for me writing this article. In this book, the characters are left complex, not complete heroes, no complete villains. This book also contains themes such as philosophy of violence and its usage, crime, guilt, ethics, aristocracy, rebellion and many more. This is surprising for an alleged children’s book, which is why it is one of my favorite books and one of the most interesting and important contributions on modern literature.
Spoiler alert: this part of the article may contain parts and statements that may spoil the plot. Best recommended to be read after finishing at least book 4- Neverseen.
The story involves a girl, Sophie to learn that she is an elf, and leaves her human family to go live her new life in the elven world. She is slowly being assimilated into the society of elves. The first book shows the elven culture, governance, medicine, and etc. Elves also have special abilities at some cases, such as being able to control fire(pyrokinetic), telepathy, and etc. She uses help from a mysterious organization known as black swan to stop fires that were currently endangering humans. She also learns that she was created by the same organization as project moonlark which gives her several abilities and also the anomalous appearance of brown eyes as normally elves have blue ones. Then she joins the black swan at book 4 and Sophie and her friends stop a disease that affects gnomes and flood half of Ravagog, the ogre capital city. The ideology of neverseen was to put elves in control of all worlds as they were extremely intelligent and powerful though they cannot handle guilt. Then at book 5 Keefe another of sophies friends have joined the neverseen. She also learns about a plan called lodestar that was the neverseen counterpart of project moon lark. At book six her human parents go missing and she discovers nightfall is a facility of the black swan to experiment on humans created by lady Vespera to research how humans can handle guilt without their minds breaking but elves cannot. She and her friends rescue her parents. In flashback she has been doing battle training to protect herself from the neverseen. She also gets kidnapped by the neverseen at the same book. Later in flashback and Stellarlune the neverseen are eventually destroyed.
Special abilities and skills are the most interesting thing in this series. Special abilities are some talents that only some elves possess. Sometimes there can be more than one ability for an elf. However, skills are present in all elves such as telekinesis, levitation, appetite suppression and temperature regulation. Those who possess abilities are trained in Foxfire and inducted into the nobility as a regent, emissary or mentor(teacher) in foxfire. Humans generally discriminate based on class, wealth, race, creed or etc., however in this story elves discriminate based on whether they have special abilities or they are in the nobility. But is it right to give someone more social status just because they were born with a power? Though it seems like the most rational thing to do it is not morally right to do so. I say this because there may be people who are not in the nobility, if they had the same power might have contributed much to their world than the nobles are doing. The elven society is mentioned to be equal and generally better than human society. However, can a society be truly equal if it is unequal in its abilities? To examine this, consider the real world, many people are generally better than average at a certain thing, we have prodigies, sports persons, chess players and etc. All of us are special in one thing the same way some elves have special abilities while others do not. However, if that were true, then why do not all elves have special abilities? Abilities can be trained to make them better just like we can train in a sport to get better in it. Then for elves who have not manifested or have special abilities, they have skills. Being better at skills than the ones who have abilities can make up for not having special abilities. So, the prejudice and injustice created by elven tradition and its council stagnates the development of elven society. The elves should have worked to normalize the distance between the ones with abilities and the ones that do not have abilities. The usage of skills can be very helpful for elves militarily, in construction, in sanitation and etc. These skills can have their own tournaments or competitions and have sports dedicated to using these skills, like we have Olympics. Ironically the council, and all of elf kind which are supposed to be knowledgeable have not thought of this. We can also adopt this by nurturing all gifts we receive by nature, that would greatly uplift any civilization or species.
Guilt and conscience of elves. anyone who has read even the first book would know that elves are incapable of murder and if they do that their consciousness breaks. I believe this is an evolutionary reaction caused by a civil war between elves. Elves are extremely intelligent, powerful and politically influential. So according to the saying with great responsibility comes great power, the earlier elves would want to compete for power and conflict with other elves. Since they will be equally or unequally powerful, they would fight each other and die. But those elves who have more of a fear and guilt factor, would more likely be able to survive and reproduce. Their children would be more influenced by their pacifist ideals, and the guilt factor increases gradually, creating modern elves. Another reason would be that since the elves have an indefinite lifespan, younger generations could be more fearful of violence because the old and ancient elves would have experienced the pain and suffering caused by wars so the process of learning from the mistakes of the past can also influence this. However, this can also be a weakness to elves who are faced by a situation where they need to employ self-defense or possibly even kill. For example, the neverseen often abducts and tortures people in order to achieve their goals. This causes elves to often rely on other species for security. This is very fragile and may even cause elves to be extinct on the wake of an interspecies war. Some characters also have bad opinions on fighting. However, self-defense and fighting techniques must be considered as forms of art rather than ways of violence. It is like nuclear energy, it can provide energy and improve livelihoods and protect small nations from superpowers or it can cause the unfortunate events that happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki or worser.
A review about KOTLC in a single article is very hard. I have written book reviews before but, I have not about an entire series especially not one as rich as KOTLC. I will write the other important points in a future article. Therefore, I shall conclude this article with a final opinion, the elves in KOTLC might not be as different from humans as most reckon. In the previous paragraph I have explained that the elves in KOTLC have basically evolved to become more peaceful. That means, the same should have happened about their indefinite lifespan, their extreme intelligence, their skills, abilities, their whole ‘perfect’ society. Humans are evolving and improving at a constantly increasing speed. How many years have we took to move from hunter and gatherer society, to agriculture, around eighty thousand. How many to industry, around ten thousand, how many to the nuclear age, around a century, how many to modern technology, decades. Though that is slightly exaggerated and oversimplified, at the current pace of human development, we should be able to do thing similar to what the elves were doing in a matter of centuries. In this manner no species or civilization is inferior to another unless they are in conflict of interests. Each species has evolved to fit whatever situation mother nature has put them into. However, that is no excuse to move in the same pace as before even exponentially, each civilization, nation and species should always make it improve its pace of development, to create a brighter future. In this way KOTLC is a magnificent and interesting piece of art that teaches children responsibility of power, how nature is merciless in its quest of evolution, prejudice, guilt, violence and many more values. Therefore, I conclude this article by conveying that you should continue reading this series and suggest it to your friends and family. Thank you for using your time to read this article, I really apreciate it and it encourages me to continue and please share your opinions in the comments.
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