If you loved—or even remotely liked—Obert Skye’s hit series Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo, chances are you will fall head over heels for his latest series, Pillage. I just finished the first book and I am frothing at the mouth, waiting for the second one to arrive through Interlibrary Loan.

Pillage is a much faster read than Leven Thumps—mostly, I think, because it concerns things that most of us are already somewhat familiar with, like dragons and American landscape, creepy fog, bullies, and other themes we know and love from young adult literature. It’s just as exciting, though, and the characters make you love them just as much as they do in Skye’s previous novels.

Pillage is the tale of Beck, a young boy who loses his mother and is sent to live with his eccentric uncle in his giant but bare old mansion. The old man never comes down from his small room at the top of the seven-story building, only ringing for his servants when he wants something. The reason for this seems mysterious and even maybe a little crazy, but it all makes sense in the end.

Beck is a brave young man, and at nearly sixteen he already knows how to make trouble, stand up to bullies, and try to impress girls. The very first time we meet him, he’s trying to fill the school ventilation system with bees as a prank that goes wrong, if that tells you anything about him. Like Leven, though, by the end of the book Beck will be a completely changed young man as the effects of his destiny come to fruition.

This book is also told in first person rather than third, which seemed to make it a faster read as well. It also lacked any irrelevant commentary, with the narrator sticking to only what we really needed to know. There are also none of the fun drawings throughout that there were in the previous series, though it did not detract from the novel.

Throughout the book, you’ll learn that Beck has not only a mysterious gift but also a curse, and a long, dark family history that he doesn’t know about—though everyone in his community seems to know about it, or at least some of it. Why is the basement filled with dirt, for example? What is behind the mysterious old mansion, kept within a large, walled pit that no one can access?

Read Pillage if you’re in for a fast, high-flying adventure or if you, too, were a teen who couldn’t turn away from a locked door. For parents of “reluctant readers,” this story would likely make a great gift, as well.