Erec Rex: The Dragon Eye by Kaza Kingsley
Erec Rex is a twelve-year-old boy living in an unconventional family with his 'mother,' June, who has adopted him and five other children. Erec himself is a bit unusual - he has a glass eye and occasionally experiences compulsions which force him to do things that help people. His life changes forever when one of these 'cloudy thoughts' compels him to go searching for his mother. He meets Bethany, a neglected child subject to her uncle's whims, and she helps him to enter a secret, magical world where his mother has been taken. They get swept up into 'Alypium' where children are competing to be the next three rulers of the magical realm (the current triplets, two kings and a queen, have decided to retire after 500 years and the royal triplets born to King Piter died as children). Between trying to rescue his mother and competing against several hundred youths who know more about their world than he does, Erec finds his hands full and has to scramble to keep on top of it all.
Honestly, I'm not really a fan of this book. The plot is vaguely interesting and new but the writing doesn't do it justice. It starts out with so much happening that I couldn't get my bearings for the first couple of chapters (and I never did catch on to the way that they were naming places). The characters are fairly realistic, but a lot of the development feels forced. In particular, the the dialog feels contrived and unnatural and repetitive in some cases (Erec's conversations with his mother are all the same). Besides that, most fantasy fans will guess the gist of the outcome from his name/the title (I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that). Generally speaking, I'd have to say that there is a lot of fantasy out there worth reading and if you skip this series, you aren't missing much; consider these instead:
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