Flashback: Keeper of the Lost Cities, Book 7 Book Review (2025)

Common Sense Media Review

Flashback: Keeper of the Lost Cities, Book 7 Book Review (1) By Mary Eisenhart , based on child development research. How do we rate?

age 9+

Little is resolved in colossal teen-elf epic installment.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 9+?

Any Positive Content?

  • Violence & Scariness

    some

    Much of the plot involves Sophie and her friends determining that they have to become skilled with weapons and be prepared to use them to kill enemies -- and characters meet violent death. As in earlier books, the teens suffer life-threatening battle injuries that test the limits of elvin medicine. Often the danger and damage are physical, as scars accumulate, bodyguards perish, and innocents are in constant peril. Mental violence, from erasing people's memories to inflicting assorted terrors, also plays a crucial role.

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  • Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

    very little

    Potions and elixirs are just part of life. Teen characters ingest a stunning amount of (usually gross or foul-tasting) elvin medications. Sophie, who makes a point of avoiding sedatives, has to take them anyway as part of her recovery from near-fatal battle injuries.

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  • Products & Purchases

    very little

    References to events, characters, and crises of the previous volumes are frequent, but this is somewhat necessary as an aid to the reader in dealing with an increasingly complex roster and cosmology.

  • Sex, Romance & Nudity

    very little

    That kiss you've been waiting for for about three volumes now? Doesn't happen here, either, nor does any real resolution of Sophie's conflicted crushes. Some definite odd couples, including the princess who's been forced to marry her dad's top warrior, while meanwhile her ex-boyfriend has joined the bad guys. Sophie takes a close interest in the pregnancy and birth experiences of her beloved alicorn, but the narrative glosses over the graphic details while alluding to the fact that they exist.

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  • Language

    very little

    Frequent references, often humorous, to poop, pee, farts, butts, etc.

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  • Positive Messages

    a lot

    Difficult choices where all the options are bad come up often. Strong messages of friendship, family, loyalty, kindness, courage and self-sacrifice. Working together with people you don't especially like, and the importance of everyone's skills, talents, abilities, and differences in trying to do good things, and cooperating for good results.

  • Positive Role Models

    a lot

    Sophie and her friends show a lot of loyalty to one another in difficult situations, and are always ready to help make things better for each other -- all while simultaneously dealing with crushes, high school social issues, squabbling species, and saving the world. Some adults are kind and supportive, others are ineffectual or downright evil -- and some families are seriously dysfunctional as a result.

  • Educational Value

    a little

    In between the fantasy, magic, and elixirs, there's some real science. DNA plays an important role in numerous plot threads. So do the elves' efforts to save animal species from extinction.

  • Parents Need to Know

    Parents need to know that Flashback is the hefty (800+ pages) seventh volume in Shannon Messenger's Keeper of the Lost Cities series -- and far, far from anything resembling a conclusion. It has another cliffhanger ending and several tapestries' worth of dangling plot threads. As in previous volumes, the entire world is in peril. Kids suffer physical and mental violence, magical and otherwise, and grapple with the moral dilemmas of responding in kind. There's a lot of romantic angst as protagonist Sophie likes two boys, but nothing more than hugs and snuggling results. Among the multi-species bodyguards is a princess whose father has forced her to marry one of his warriors, while her ex is one of the bad guys. There are some cruelly dysfunctional families along with the kind ones. Also gross-out and bathroom humor, as the teens are always taking elvin medicine made from things like yeti pee. A beloved animal gives birth.

Where to Read

Parent and Kid Reviews

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  • Parents say (4)
  • Kids say (43)

age 11+

Based on 4 parent reviews

Icestar2008 Adult

May 20, 2023

age 13+

Fun, addictive, violent installment can be pretty slow at times

Flashback starts with a bang and ends with a BOOM, but the in-between can be super slow. For one thing, we get basically no answers about anything besides Silveny’s pregnancy and the fact that Fitz likes Sophie (ugh, Fitzphie is SO gross), so if you’re wondering if you can skip a book, this would be the book to skip, though I definitely don’t recommend doing that. Some stuff is really great, (Sophie and Keefe’s spirited, feisty banter and magnetic chemistry, anything with Ro, and the fact that Dex has finally gotten over Sophie) and other stuff is just meh. The writing is totally engrossing, Shannon Messenger has crafted a great style that sweeps you away and leaves you feeling like an emotional wreck after the book is over, so the hundreds of pages in the Healing Center were actually pretty interesting even though not much really happened. The fight that lands Sophie and Fitz in the Healing Center is pretty graphic, too. My thirteen year old self felt a little queasy reading it, and I have a super tough stomach when it comes to violence in books or movies. The crunching and shattering of bones, the shredding of muscle and nerve, the slicing and stabbing of said shattered bones and shredded muscle, it’s all pretty gory. Plus we also get Sophie’s agonized POV as this all happens to her and her friends, which adds an intriguing level of intensity to it all. But a thirteen year old could most likely handle it. And then the love triangle, let me just say, you will be So. Sick. Of. It. Because all those pages with Sophie and her duo add up to Sophie still not knowing who she really likes. (Is anybody really in doubt about who she’s going to choose? Because I’d bet quite a lot of money that it’s Keefe.) It gets tiring to read about pages upon pages of Keefe, Sophie, and Fitz navigating their complicated feelings, and by the end of it you have a big fat nothing. (By the way, you won’t get a semi-ending to the triangle until Stellarlune. Have fun waiting.) We also don’t see a lot of the side characters we’ve come to care about much, either. And Fitz becomes a total jerk by the end of the book. But, even with all that, Flashback is still entertaining. Yes, it’s a bit of a filler book. Yes, it can be hand-wringing inducing at times. But it’s also fun, engrossing, and has a signature edginess to it that’s great for teen readers, too. So should you read it? Yeah, even if you won’t feel totally satisfied by the end of it. But the story’s not over yet, so that’s only to be expected.

DorkyPotato1 Adult

March 24, 2019

age 11+

Rate book

See all 4 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Memories, edited and otherwise, play a starring role in FLASHBACK, as 15-year-old genetically engineered elf Sophie Foster struggles with mental images from her past that she's been unable to confront as the conflict with the Neverseen escalates. Meanwhile, friend and love interest Keefe is grappling with his own lost recollections from a childhood where his arch-villainess mom sent him on errands that may be all too relevant to the cosmic conflict at hand -- which, as the book opens, puts Sophie and other love interest Fitz in the infirmary with life-threatening injuries.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:

Parents say (4):

Kids say (43):

Elf teens face hardship and moral dilemmas en route to another cliffhanger in this series installment that's exciting but a bit frustrating. Hoping for a satisfying wrap-up of Shannon Messenger's elvin epic? You won't get it this time. But if you love the series for the sparkly world-building, the costume changes, the inner turmoil over romance and world-saving, and the likelihood that some previously unmentioned event or magical capability will emerge at just the right moment, you'll be happy with Flashback. If you love the interplay of dozens of intriguing but still largely undeveloped characters as they find themselves in challenging situations and squabble among themselves -- or work together to achieve some heroic, impossible goal -- ditto.

But if you're waiting for author Messenger to reveal, say, Sophie's biological parents (after a multi-volume tease), you'll be none the wiser after 848 pages. And that pesky love triangle? Still triangulating. If you're in this for something other than the immersion, you may be feeling a bit strung along and losing patience about now.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about stories like Flashback, where there aren't any really good choices, and the protagonist has to make difficult decisions anyway. Do you find this a relatable situation? What other stories do you know that explore this theme?

  • The issue of whether to use violence in response to your enemy's violence is a big part of the story in Flashback. Do you think it's OK to use violence in defense of yourself and your loved ones? What price do you think you might have to pay if you did?

  • How would you like to live in a society where some higher authority picked out your possible life partners for you, as happens among the elves? Would it make life simpler or be really creepy?

Book Details

  • Author: Shannon Messenger
  • Genre: Fantasy
  • Topics: Magic and Fantasy, Adventures, Brothers and Sisters, Friendship
  • Book type: Fiction
  • Publisher: Aladdin
  • Publication date: November 6, 2018
  • Publisher's recommended age(s): 8 - 12
  • Number of pages: 848
  • Available on: Nook, Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
  • Last updated: August 15, 2021

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Flashback: Keeper of the Lost Cities, Book 7

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Flashback: Keeper of the Lost Cities, Book 7 Book Review (2025)
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