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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In B.R. Kang’s Caput Mundi: The Head of the World, twelve-year-old Niil has spent a year on Umbra after Marcus and Mira Marcellus kidnapped him over a debt owed by his father, Hidemith Terra. When Niil discovers he can summon enarii, a liquid metal shaped through imagination, the couple train him in the ability once shared by his missing mother, Regina. After Ada, their thirteen-year-old daughter, arrives with news about the Marcelluses, Niil leaves Umbra beside her and enters Caput Mundi in search of his parents. Ada’s cousin Soes, an aspiring baker with a talent for invention, joins them as Niil learns that the Doubleyes, a group marked by burned rings, are preparing an attack connected to enarii. Niil must uncover why his family is involved before the most powerful nation in Hearth pays the price.
B.R. Kang’s Caput Mundi: The Head of the World follows Niil through a world where practical knowledge becomes as valuable as enarii. The world building is completely fleshed out, and Kang incorporates each invention part of life in a way that makes it feel totally organic. I love how every child contributes through a skill that belongs naturally to them. When moonstalk smoke traps Niil in hallucinations, his memory of his father’s tea identifies the plant before Soes uses an Alert patch to wake him. Kang returns to that teamwork in Osca, where Niil realizes the flowercrabs want Soes’s MSTG seasoning, then Ada turns their discovery into an agreement with the miners. Niil is a fantastic main character, and someone we really want to root for, and his kindness is present in every decision. Well written and imaginative, middle-grade fantasy readers will adore this.
