Ted, Ruth, Patrick, Ellen, and Laura are still stuck in the Secret Country, the world of their imagining that has become all too real. War is brewing, war against the Dragon King, and tensions are running high. For the king and his counselors, it means preparing for battle. For the five children, it means trying to avoid playing out the worst of the Secret Country’s fates.

The Hidden Land picks up pretty much immediately after The Secret Country and a lot of what I said about its predecessor continues to be the same. It’s a intelligent, twisty young adult series. Characters are genuinely complex and multi-faceted. Hundreds of pages later, they can still surprise you. They are also smart and literate. Dean throws around T.S Eliot and Shakespeare as easy as breathing. Her language is evocative and enigmatic, which suits the feel of her story.

The mysteries in this book aren’t straightforward. You have to work for it. Dean doesn’t so much flesh out the Secret Country for you as much as she builds it in frames and sketches, leaving you to fill in the blanks. For the most part, it works. Sometimes I did get frustrated with the ambiguity and how, by the end of the book, I didn’t know that much more than the beginning. I also thought that the bit with the Land of the Dead was hyped up in the synopsis but ultimately too short.

But at the end of the day, The Hidden Land remains a mature, rewarding fantasy with beautiful language and complex characters. ( )

Fighting to avert the problems they relished inventing in their game from manifesting in the Hidden Land the five cousins with varying success impersonate the five royal children whose identity they have taken over upon arrival in this world. Unableto do so they end up escaping back to their own world. ( )