Twelve-year-old Vivian Van Tassel and her father relocate to the mysterious small town of Midnight Lake. Broken and bitter after her mom’s death, a welcome distraction for Vivian is trips to the library to research the town’s mysterious history. Animal attacks, strange creatures, hallucinations, and a middle school that was once a sanatorium.
Who wouldn’t want to live in Midnight Lake? As the new girl, Vivian is pounced on by the mean girls, but finds reluctant friendships with the school oddballs obsessed with the role playing game Beasts and Battlements. The similarities between Dungeons & Dragons and Beasts and Battlements are intentional as author Michael Witwer is the bestselling author known for his work on the Hugo-nominated Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana. The novel’s first half suffers a little from the plot set-ups for later payoffs. When Vivian discovers characters from B&B; vulturebears, leer spheres, and canimen, are real and part of the dark forces set to destroy the town, and well, the entire world, the story is on firmer footing.
Vivian is reluctant to involve her new friends in the mystery, to her peril, it seems, and only later does she learn the value of strong friendships. Vivian is a strong and well-rounded enough character to drive the story – the secondary characters are mostly standard archetypes – but Witwer is at his best with the world-building and gaming elements, the monsters, the mystery and the sense of dread our young protagonist faces before she must confront the forces of evil. Strangely, the pace is bogged down with numerous Harry Potter references as Vivian compares herself to the hero of JK Rowling’s novels. You have to ask why, in 2023, would Witwer align his main character with Rowling’s, an author with such a controversial reputation.
Vivian Van Tassel and the Secret of Midnight Lake is a fun and fast-paced adventure fantasy, and young readers are sure to root for the hero, but ultimately the plot lacks the spark of originality that will set it above the other novels in this crowded genre.
Michael Witwer is a New York Times bestselling author known for his work on the Hugo Award–nominated Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, the critically acclaimed Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons, and the bestselling Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook. His most recent works include Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Visual Dictionary, and when he’s not writing books about games, he loves playing them. Michael lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, two daughters, and two sons. Vivian Van Tassel and the Secret of Midnight Lake is his debut middle-grade fiction novel.
- Publisher : Aladdin (Aug. 29 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1665918195
- ISBN-13 : 978-1665918190
