Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads Incanto #3: La magia dei ricordi.
Book three time!
Before we dive in, I do have some sad news regarding my reviews of this series: I recently discovered that, despite this series being quite expansive in its number of books (fifteen total), my review of the next book will unfortunately have to be the last one. Not because I want to quit reading them, but simply because they have not been translated into Dutch past book four.
Normally my solution would be to read the English editions, but these books actually haven't been translated into English at all. And since I do not speak Italian or any of the other translated languages of the future books, I have no choice but to stop reviewing the series. I don't think that they'll be translating them into Dutch in the future, either, so it looks like my Incanto journey will have to end with book four. Unfortunate, but true.
Anyways, let's still have a look at book three, first! Spoilers ahead.
Incanto lies under threat of Egor once again: this time the girls' animal companions have all been kidnapped by the dark wizard and they have to find a way to get them back. They'll have to travel treacherous locations and even risk losing their own memories in order to do so.
It's fine. This is mostly how I'd describe the Incanto books so far. I don't find them quite as interesting and deep as the Princesses of Fantasy Kingdom series is (basically the sister series about the same characters for an older audience), but they're still perfectly serviceable. Each book presents a (rather simple) conflict caused by Egor, the girls have to solve a riddle or problem and all's well that end's well. And usually there's some morals about friendship and teamwork and believing in yourself sprinkled in here and there.
While I don't think these books are amazing by any means, they do their jobs well. I think I've just come to accept by this book that they're really just a bit too juvenile for me to enjoy. Which I usually don't mind, I've reviewed and liked quite a few children's books on here before, but I guess that these books are just a tad too simple for me.
Still, like I said, they perfectly serve their purpose and I genuinely think that they are good for a younger audience who can be invested in this. They have nice simple and more lighthearted conflicts, the characters are simple but not bad, the text is fun and playful, the morals (while basic) are still good and the illustrations are nice.
I guess my older brain being used to the slightly more serious and more serialized companion-series to this one is expecting a little bit more of an ongoing story-line with the girls taking an active stand against Egor. Right now basically each book is just Egor unleashing some kind of curse or dark spell which hinders the girls or the kingdom, the girls travel and solve problems in order to combat this and they're done. I just guess I'd hoped that there'd been some initiative from the girls to like...be more proactive in standing against Egor. Have an actual ongoing series about them trying to put a permanent stop to his evil spells but right now it's just. Egor causes conflict. Girls solve conflict. Happily ever after. Rinse and repeat each book. You'd think that the girls after a while would get sick of the dark wizard's meddling and try to actively stop him from doing future harm but right now they're mostly just focused on undoing his curses and not much else.
Which, for the record, is perfectly fine. It's just not what this series is, it's not that serialized and (at least in the first three books, I of course can't speak for what happens later down the line) there's no real overarching plot as of yet. And it's fine, like I said for the target audience this is a perfectly serviceable series. It's just not what I'm looking for exactly, just a bit too simplistic in my eyes.
I'll still review book four (since there's only one left in my language, anyways) but I do think that it's wise for me to stop after that anyways, since there's just not enough substance for me here. Again, I re-iterate: a perfectly fine and serviceable book for the target audience, but it's just too simplistic and lacking in substance to keep me as an older reader engaged. And, for the record, I have read books for the same age demographic which didn't suffer from this. So it's not just because of the target demographic. Ah well. See you in book four for my penultimate Incanto review.
Rating: 3/5
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