Table of Contents
Novel. It is a fantasy for young readers. It is the first book of T. A. Barron’s Atlantis Saga.
This is not Patricia Cori’s Atlantis Rising. Cori’s book is a different work, already on this site. This page is at /book/atlantis-rising-barron so the two are not mixed.
I have not read Barron’s novel. This is not a chapter-by-chapter reading. The outline below comes from the author’s site, from his publisher’s announcement, from library records, and from the Amazon listing.
What the book is
The title is Atlantis Rising.
T. A. Barron is the author. He is also the author of the Merlin Saga. A press release from 18 September 2013 calls this Atlantis book the start of a new trilogy.
Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin, published it. The press release gives the date 26 September 2013 and a price of $17.99. It says the book is for readers aged 9 and up. The author’s site lists a paperback, ISBN 9780147512215, at 371 pages, for ages 10 and up.
The hardcover ISBN-13 is 9780399257575. Amazon’s listing for that edition gives the ISBN-10 as 0399257578 and the publisher as Philomel Books, with the date 26 September 2013. Amazon lists 384 pages. Library records at Wake County and at Spokane Public Library describe a 2013 Philomel book of 371 pages, with maps, and they print the same hardcover ISBN. I have not seen the copy. I report both counts.
The Atlantis idea
Barron writes the birth of Atlantis. His press release says the trilogy asks how the island came to be, not how it was destroyed.
That is the opposite direction from the story most readers know. In Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, Atlantis is already a great power, and then it sinks. Barron’s public description starts earlier. Atlantis is the result of a vow two children make.
The setting he names is not the Atlantic seabed. It is a magical land called Ellegandia. The author’s site says that land is a pawn in an old war between good and evil. The war is fought in a spirit realm and in the human world. Atlantis, if it comes to be, is an island cut off from the rest of the world, where magic rules.
So the Atlantis in this book is a fantasy place with a beginning inside the story. It is not offered as a sunken city a diver could find.
The plot as the author and the libraries describe it
I am not following chapters. The public summaries are short, and they agree.
Promi is a boy in Ellegandia. He gets by as a thief. The author’s site says he steals pies, cakes, and sweets. He does not know that his country is caught in that older war. He has secrets of his own.
He joins a girl named Atlanta. Library catalogues call her a forest girl, and call Promi a young thief. Together they fight evil. The author’s site says they vow to save their land and each other. The press release adds their forest to that vow. The vow may create Atlantis.
The press release names the themes Barron wants readers to meet. They are the inner hero, care for nature, bravery, honesty, and loyalty. It says the characters have to find an inner strength, which the release also calls an inner magic, and that they have to work together.
I do not have a public chapter list I trust, and I am not going to invent one. The author’s site offers a recorded introduction and a reading from the first chapter. I have not used those recordings as a source for plot. Hearing the text would be a reading. This page stays with the written descriptions.
My view
I file this as myth-making for children, in the plain sense. Barron is writing a new origin, on purpose. His own announcement says so. That is allowed in a novel. It is not a historical claim, and the page should not be read as one.
Ellegandia is his country. I have not met that name in Plato, or in the old reports I use for Atlantis. Atlanta as a girl in a forest is also his character. The similar sound to “Atlantis” looks like a story device. I would not build a word-origin on it without the book and without an older source.
The part I mark for this site is the title. Two books here are called Atlantis Rising. Cori’s book sits with channeled history and a fallen civilization. Barron’s book, from the outside, sits with fantasy and a birth. A reader who wants one of them needs the author’s name.
I have not read Barron’s pages. I cannot speak to the style. The reviews gathered on his site praise the adventure and the world. I leave those judgments with the reviewers.
Sources
I used these public sources. I did not use the text of the book.