By Brandon Mull

It’s Halloween. You’re out with friends. The goal? To have as much fun as possible (and maybe impress Jenna Hunt just a bit). So what’s the plan? Haunted house, duh.

So Cole and his friends find themselves in a haunted house that’s a bit less than ordinary, if haunted houses can even be called ordinary. But what’s definitely not ordinary is all of Cole’s friends being whisked away through a portal to the Outskirts. So Cole dives in after them. How else is he supposed to impress Jenna?

On the other side are the Five Kingdoms, the lands in between. In between what? You may ask. Everything. People tend to find their ways there from other worlds, and once there, it is very difficult to leave. Impossible, some might even say.

So now Cole has to save his friends, not only from the slavers who captured them, but from the world itself. Because if he’s too late, all of them might end up living in the Outskirts forever…and being forgotten by everyone in their world.

Along the way, Cole meets lots of interesting people, like Mira, a girl who teams up with him (or does she force him to join her?). And soon he finds himself not just responsible for saving himself and his friends, but for saving the Outskirts themselves.

There are five books in this series, each of them focusing on one of the Five Kingdoms. It’s super epic and amazing, and the characters are amazing. Read it for the ending. I think 2 and 4 were my favorites.

General Stats:

• Genre: Portal Fantasy
• Book 1 of 5
• Age: 5th grade and above
• My rating: ★★★★☆