The Mystic Menace

by Stephanie Kim Pascaru

For three hundred years, the kingdom of Camellia has been stuck in a never-ending plague. A glowing claw mark on everyone’s wrists and a lifespan cut off at forty. No one knows how it started. No one knows its true purpose. And no one has ever been cured.
Almost no one.
When Isadora discovers an ancient gemstone, she is freed from the plague and unearths strange powers—powers Camellia hasn’t seen in centuries. Now every peasant, soldier, and assassin is on the hunt for Isadora, eager to take her down. That’s more than fine with Isadora—it’s exactly the kind of adventure she was waiting for. With the help of Terrance, the ever-skilled (and ever-arrogant) soldier, Isadora sets out on a quest to uncover the truth, lift the plague, and defeat the Eternal Rulers that started it all.
But the Eternal Rulers are not to be messed with. They’ve snuffed out rebellious sparks before, and they can do it again, for they have secrets older than the plague itself—secrets that could mean the destruction of Camellia forever.

632 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 21, 2022

About the author

Stephanie Kim Pascaru was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. Growing up, she read The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, The Brothers Grimm, The Secret Garden, Sailor Moon, Disney Fairies—all the essentials—and fell in love with adventure and fantasy stories. She spent most of her formal education daydreaming about shining knights, deadly dragons, evil kings, and lightning-wielding outlaws until she finally decided to start writing about them. The Mystic Menace is her first novel.

Reviews

[Reader Views · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Mystic Menace” by Stephanie Kim Pascaru is an epic young adult fantasy novel. For 300 years everyone in the Kingdom of Camellia has been marked with a mysterious glowing claw mark on their wrists. The mark represents an ongoing plague that results in the same devastating end for all: death by age 40. Many have tried to understand the nature of the plague and how it started. Many have wondered if there would ever be a cure. None have succeeded, until now.

Seventeen-year-old Isadora finds an ancient gemstone one night that not only awakens a dormant superpower within her but cures her of the plague. Soon, she is being hunted as the current King and Queen seek to stop her from learning the true secrets behind the plague. Together with Terrance, a soldier who while skilled, also tends to annoy her to no end, Isadora sets out to learn long-buried truths, get rid of the plague once and for all, and see that the Eternal Rulers are defeated for good. The Eternal Rulers are powerful, however, with secrets far older than the plague and that could end in the destruction of not just Isadora, but Camellia itself.

“The Mystic Menace” is a fast-paced read perfect for thrill seekers and those longing to go on a mystical adventure. The book contains magic, romance, grief, desperation, betrayal, oppression, and more- which bring the fantasy world level with our own plane of reality. The Eternal Rulers present an interesting metaphor, by presenting villains who figuratively and literally suck the life force out of their people. Camellia is run in a feudal-like system. Isadora is from a peasant family, which means her years have been shackled with the toils of hard manual labor, little compassion from her overseers and peers, and a grim, short future. The plague seems to work by gradually turning its victims into stone-like beings. The confines of systemic oppression and tyrannical rulers have literally constricted so hard around the common people that they become something less than human. It is an interesting euphemism to see in a time when there seems to be a growing gap in wealth and power in many societies.

“The Mystic Menace” contains a captivating cast of diverse characters. While I sometimes found Isadora and Terrance to come off a little more immature than their stated ages would suggest, I found them to be a dynamic, quirky duo. They embolden each other to harness their strengths, work together past their differences, and admit what they are scared of or do not want to believe. Isadora and Terrance make each other want to be better people, and their relationship, as it develops over the course of the book, has a sweet, funny, wholesome nature that is impossible not to be charmed by. I found myself rooting for them from the very beginning.

Isadora, in particular, had a lot on her plate in “The Mystic Menace.” Aside from discovering that she was descended from the true royal bloodline and had the potential to save the entire kingdom – Isadora also had to worry about a lot of normal, everyday things that readers will be able to identify with. She yearns for her parents’ approval and praise yet can never seem to meet her mother’s expectations. She wants to rise in her community by inventing funky new tools to help make their work more efficient, but her efforts are commonly ridiculed or end in misfortune. She wants to break free of the confines of her parents, the plague, and her social status as a peasant, and be able to choose her own destiny.

All these things are aspects teens experience daily, and which serve books well when trying to reach a target audience in this age range. She is a little stubborn sometimes, can be rather impulsive, and bristles under criticism, but also keeps her goals in mind and continuously seeks to move forward to whatever her next step is. She is the perfect heroine for the book, and the genre of YA Fantasy, in general.

“The Mystic Menace” by Stephanie Kim Pascaru is a must-read for fans of YA Fantasy. It has valuable lessons and thrilling adventures to impart to teen readers as well as those in other age groups who are fans of the genre.