Maya and the Rising Dark is a fun, action-packed adventure story based on West African mythology. Twelve-year old Maya has always dismissed her papa’s adventure stories as bizarre and unreal, but when she begins to notice creatures straight out of those stories around her neighbourhood on the south side of Chicago whom apparently nobody else sees, Maya tells her friends Eli and Frankie about them, and the trio starts looking for an explanation. They find out that Maya’s father, who is actually the orisha guardian of the veil between our world and The Dark, has been kidnapped by the Lord of Shadows, a terrifying entity who appears in Maya’s dreams frequently. Now it’s up to Maya and her friends to rescue Maya’s father from the Dark and stop the Lord of Shadows from unleashing his army on the human world.
Maya and the Rising Dark is an exhilarating ride through and through. The story jumps quickly into action as Maya learns that the forces of the Dark are about to invade the human world and she is the only one with the power to prevent them. Barron’s writing style is quirky and delightful, it pulls you in and keeps you captivated until the very last page. I especially loved that Barron didn’t shy away from exploring and discussing some quite dark themes, despite it being a middle grade book. As the story progresses, Maya comes to see how even heroes can mess up and misuse their powers, how sometimes seemingly heroic deeds come at someone’s expense and have lasting consequences, and how our heroes can also be someone else’s monsters at the same time.
Maya is a wonderful, fierce protagonist; most readers, regardless of their age, will find themselves relating to her at least a little bit. As many other middle grade novels, Maya and the Rising Dark too highlights beautiful and heart-melting friendship dynamics. The bond between Maya and her two friends is at the heart of the book, Eli and Frankie’s insistence to stick with Maya no matter what propels the plot forward. What sets Maya’s story apart, however, is the focus on the relationship between Maya and her dad; a father-daughter duo fighting a bunch of bad guys is a very rare occurrence in fantasy novels, and that’s why it was quite possibly my favourite scene in the whole book.
Maya and the Rising Dark does leave a few things to be desired when it comes to the characterisation. While Maya is a complex and layered character, none of the secondary characters go through much development, which was especially disappointing in the cases of Frankie and Eli. They both play important roles in the story, and the main antagonist, who ended up being one-dimensional and quite boring, but that may be because we didn’t really get to see much of him. I couldn’t help feeling like if they had a little more build-up and if we got to know a bit more about their backgrounds, it’d have been easier for me to connect with the story in general.
The few small quibbles aside, I really enjoyed Maya and the Rising Dark, and I can’t wait to find out where the future instalments in Maya’s story take us! If you’ve read and loved Roshani Chokshi’s Aru Shah and the End of Time, Kwame Mbalia’s Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky or Claribel A. Ortega’s Ghost Squad, I highly recommend checking this one out!
Maya and the Rising Dark is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of September 22nd 2020.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
In this highly anticipated contemporary fantasy, twelve-year-old Maya’s search for her missing father puts her at the center of a battle between our world, the Orishas, and the mysterious and sinister Dark world. Perfect for fans of Aru Shah and the End of Time and The Serpent’s Secret.
Twelve-year-old Maya is the only one in her South Side Chicago neighborhood who witnesses weird occurrences like werehyenas stalking the streets at night and a scary man made of shadows plaguing her dreams. Her friends try to find an explanation—perhaps a ghost uprising or a lunchroom experiment gone awry. But to Maya, it sounds like something from one of Papa’s stories or her favorite comics.
When Papa goes missing, Maya is thrust into a world both strange and familiar as she uncovers the truth. Her father is the guardian of the veil between our world and the Dark—where an army led by the Lord of Shadows, the man from Maya’s nightmares, awaits. Maya herself is a godling, half orisha and half human, and her neighborhood is a safe haven. But now that the veil is failing, the Lord of Shadows is determined to destroy the human world and it’s up to Maya to stop him. She just hopes she can do it in time to attend Comic-Con before summer’s over.
