The Kingdom Kids Face Their Final Battle
It’s come down to this. After countless adventures as the Kingdom Keepers, and now their kids, face off against the Overtakers, there will be one final batter for control of the Disney parks. Fans will want to pick up and see where things go in The Final Draw.
If that last paragraph made no sense to you, then this book isn’t for you…yet. This is the final adventure in a saga that has spanned three series and over a dozen books. There is lots of backstory and mythology that you are not going to follow if you jump in here.
But, so you’ll have some context here, the series has followed five ordinary kids who were the model for interactive holographic hosts in the Disney parks. They discovered that it came with an unexpected ability, to cross over to the parks as their holograms in their sleep. Sounds sweet, right? It might be except for their other discovery. All the characters in the movies we love? They are real, and the villains have formed a group called the Overtakers who are trying to take over the magic in the parks and use it for evil. And these teens, known as the Kingdom Keepers, are the only defense against this happening.
This is the third book in the Inheritance spin off series that focuses on the kids of the original Keepers as they find themselves fighting the villains 20 years in the future.
This book opens with Eli Finn and his friends, who have dubbed themselves the Kingdom Kids, are in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom for the fireworks on Friday night. But the fireworks all go off at once. And then the kids make another discovery – all the villains and henchmen have vanished from the various rides in the parks. Can they figure out the riddle they got from Tiana in time to save the magic? Or will it be lost for good?
As I said earlier, if you’ve read the series this far, you’ll definitely want to pick up this book to see how things turn out for our characters. While the original Kingdom Keepers have much smaller roles in this book than they had in the first two books in this trilogy, I really liked the scenes that Eli got with his parents. In fact, I found a couple scenes with them to be better than much of what we get in a typical middle grade book. They are very well done.
As is always the case with these books, I find the characters to be fairly thin. But I wouldn’t have minded as a kid, and I’m sure today’s kids won’t mind either.
The plot allows for plenty of tense scenes in deserted Disney theme parks, which is always a highlight. We get some time in various attractions as well. As a Disnerd, these are the reasons I pick up and enjoy the books.
The story itself holds up fairly well. Honestly, with these books, it is easier to go along for the ride than try to keep track of all the logic and plot twists. Internally, the stories are consistent, but it’s the logic when you try to incorporate this into the rest of the world that doesn’t quite work for me. As a kid, I wouldn’t have tried to be that logical about things, so just sit back and enjoy.
Author Ridley Pearson has stated that this will be his last story in the Kingdom Keepers universe. But I feel like he said that several years ago before he started this trilogy. So we’ll see if that stays true or not.
Whether this turns out to be our last adventure or not, The Final Draw is a fun one.
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