Ignatius and the Swords of Nostaw

D.A. Mucci writes Ignatius and the Swords of Nostaw as middle grade fantasy in the chosen-one tradition. Ignatius is the kind of overlooked boy who turns out to be the only one who can pull a particular set of swords from where they’ve been hidden, and the rest of the book follows him out of his small town and into a larger conflict he doesn’t yet understand.

The pacing is brisk, which middle grade demands. The villains are distinct without being cartoonish. The friendships Ignatius builds along the way carry most of the emotional weight.

Mucci doesn’t reinvent the genre, but he does deliver a clean adventure that the target age group can read in a few sittings.

For readers who liked the Percy Jackson series or the early Harry Potter books and want something with a slightly darker edge, this fits. The first in a series, with more to come.