Book Review: Kingdom Keepers I

Bob reviews Ridley Pearson's Disney After Dark

- by Bob McLain, February 15, 2011

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The Kingdom Keepers series by Ridley Pearson is written for children.

I haven't been a child - at least not in appearance - for a few years.

Okay, you got me: decades.

So I read the first book in the Kingdom Keepers series expecting a sophomoric slog littered with Disney references to help boost sales. I figured Pearson had used Disney as a clever hook to ensnare the Mickey faithful. Nothing more than that.

Well, I was right about the hook. It's clever.

But I was wrong about everything else.

Ridley Read My Mind

Disney After Dark is a young person's adventure set mostly in Disney World's Magic Kingdom after the park closes for the night. It's a young person's adventure with appeal, certainly, to young people but also to the vast audience of adults who visit Disney and especially to those for whom the Disney experience is year-round.

By 'year-round' I mean the folks who post in Disney forums, read Disney blogs, and stick Disney toppers on their car antennas. I count myself as part of this group.

For us, Disney in Shadow isn't so much an adventure as a fantasy: it presents in words the secret desire of many Disney fans to do exactly what the book's heroes must do.

Does Ridley deliver? Is the 'hook' still fresh after 300 pages? Let's see...

Maleficent the Magnificent

In fiction, good plots are easily stated.

The plot of Disney After Dark is this: kids fight Disney villains who come alive and try to take over the Magic Kingdom. It fits on a napkin! And it's a really, really good plot.

Pearson's young protagonists are not entirely human. Disney Imagineers have 'changed' them into virtual park guides called Disney Host Interactives (DHI). At night, after they fall asleep, the kids 'wake up' in the Magic Kingdom as their gently glowing DHI selves. In that form, they can see the Disney characters come alive. Goofy rushes by. Pirates attack. And Maleficent, well, she'd come in handy at an ice cube factory.

An aging Imagineer named Wayne talks the DHI kids into solving a riddle left behind by Walt Disney himself. They must solve the riddle in order to stop the evil characters - known as the Overtakers - from taking over the park ... and then the world!

Maleficent is the book's main villain. In Pearson's hands, she is evil incarnate - yet with a certain cold beauty. He portrays her perfectly. Truth to tell, I was rooting for her. A little bit. But then I've always had a crush on Maleficent. (And yes, I'm seeking therapy for it.)

The finale, set in the Magic Kingdom's waste chutes, is its own thrill ride, with the kids finally coming face-to-face with an Overtaker and pitting their wits against its dark magic.

Ridley Gets It Right

Disney nitpickers and curmudgeons have found fault with some of Ridley's ride descriptions. And, yes, some events in the books do happen just when they're supposed to happen in furtherance of the plot.

But Pearson isn't writing a Disney encyclopedia. He's correct in everything that matters, and for an adventure book like Disney After Dark, that's plenty close enough.

The kids, Wayne the Imagineer, and the supporting characters are broadly drawn. They are at the end of the book what they were at the start. But Disney After Dark is all about the plot, and the plot is all about the Magic Kingdom. It's Disney that powers this novel.

Pearson knows it, too.

Virtually every page in the book is either dialog about how the kids are going to solve the riddle and defeat the Overtakers or action about the kids in the Magic Kingdom running, hiding, fighting, scheming, and generally doing what we ourselves wish we could do.

Bob Reaches a Verdict

You're not in suspense, are you?

I started Kingdom Keepers: Disney After Dark as a reviewer but finished as a fan.

I'll confess to not having much interest in Ridley Pearson's Kingdom Keepers series until now. My mistake. It's clean, convincing adventure set compellingly in Disney World, and a pleasure to read not just for the cool Magic Kingdom sequences but for Ridley's crisp, muscular prose. Once begun, it's hard to put this book down.

The next book in the series, Kingdom Keepers II: Disney at Dawn, brings back the characters from the first book and introduces new Overtakers as their foes.

Come back next week for my review!

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