The Keeper of Three

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Fantasy readers in middle and senior schools will find the genre’s
familiar elements generally well executed in Munsey’s first two
volumes of a projected trilogy, The Stoneman Series. The books’
central theme, the ongoing battle between good and evil, finds its
specific expression in the quest of Julian, the Stoneman’s son, who is
accompanied on his journey by his two young nephews and Princess Darla,
one of the Old Ones, (guardian beings charged with maintaining the
balance between good and evil, power and magic). The peace that the
Southlands had known since the Separation War is being threatened by
Lord Merm, evil’s physical presence and the leader of the bellicose
Gotts, who is seeking the key that will unlock the Magic and allow him
to enslave the three worlds. In The Flight of the Stoneman’s Son,
Julian must beat Lord Merm to the desired object. In The Keeper of
Three, Julian, who is now being pursued by Lord Merm and his forces,
must deliver the object to a designated place of safety.

Part of the strength of Munsey’s writing is his ability to create
visual settings and to populate them with well-developed and different
peoples, such as the Gotts’ mercenaries, the nomadic Riders of the Ice
barrens, and the Dwellers of the Burning Forest. The first volume, being
essentially action-driven, moves much more quickly than the second,
which pauses frequently to explain and explore the ever-expanding levels
of evil with which Julian must contend. Each book can be read on its
own, though readers, desirous of a sense of completion, will want to
finish the entire series.

On the negative side, Munsey’s black-and-white illustrations, which
are scattered throughout the two books, are jarringly offputting, being
neither decoratively entertaining nor informative. Tighter editing would
have caught the numerous and annoying spelling errors and homonym and
comma faults. Recommended.