Amulet (comics)

Amulet is a graphic novel series illustrated and written by Kazu Kibuishi and published by Scholastic.^[1][2][3]

The series follows the adventures of Emily Hayes (nicknamed Em), who after moving to their great-grandfather's house in the town of Norlen and then discovers and wears the magical amulet that uses magical powers. After entering the fictional world of Alledia with her younger brother, Navin and their mother, Karen, they befriend the allies and set off to defeat the villainous Elf King.

Synopsis

Vol. One: After David Hayes died in a car accident, his widow, Karen, and their children, Emily and Navin, move to a house in the little town of Norlen, as Karen cannot afford their old home and she hopes that a new location will help them reboot their lives and forget the bad memories which haunt them. The house, which has been in her family for years, is large and needs care and attention. As they clean the house, Emily finds a strange amulet in the library where her great-grandfather, Silas Charnon, worked and wears it. That night, Karen goes to the basement and is kidnapped by a monstrous arachnopod. Emily and Navin follow them into another world to save her. They are then pursued by a mysterious elf but are rescued by a rabbit-like robot called Miskit. They all go to the house in which Silas Charnon lives in this new world, called Alledia, and meet some his other robots, Cogsley, Morrie, and Bottle. Emily talks to Silas, who is on the brink of death. Emily is spoken to by a voice of the amulet, which tells her to accept the powers of the amulet and become a stonekeeper in order to save their mother, and Emily accepts, despite Navin's disagreement. They then hunt down the arachnopod in a plane with Navin piloting, Miskit shooting, and Emily using her stone. They catch up to the arachnopod but the mysterious elf reappears and kills the arachnopod, freeing Karen from the corpse. Emily and the elf struggle and Emily uses the stone to overwhelm the elf, Trellis. She saves her mother, but she ends up poisoned by the arachnopod and they begin to travel to the nearest city in a robot which Silas's house is transformed into.

Vol. Two: After Karen is poisoned by the arachnopod, Emily and Navin take her to the city of Kanalis to find a cure, but they are being hunted by the Elves sent by the Elf King. Luckily, they meet a humanoid fox named Leon Redbeard who helps them and teaches Emily some basic lessons of how to wield the amulet's power. While Emily, Miskit and Leon travel to Demon Head's Mountain, a humanoid bull, Balan, introduces Navin to a crew of humanoid animals called the Resistance, who help them to power the robots in the house after they have been powered off to prevent the elves from gathering information. Emily, Leon and Miskit arrive at their destination and are encountered by the Gadobah trees, which are future-telling trees that bear the fruit that can cure Emily's mother. Using her stone's powers, she finds the non-poisonous one and they set off to reunite with Navin and the Resistance. They are stopped by Luger, an elf stonekeeper, who is then attacked by Trellis. Luger loses control of his amulet's power, hence the title 'The Stonekeeper's Curse', but is destroyed by Navin piloting the robotic house infused with Emily's amulet power.

Vol. Three: After Karen is cured of the arachnopod's poison, Leon takes Emily and company to search the skies to find Cielis, the legendary city of stonekeepers, chartering an airship, and end up with one that is piloted by a crew of two humanoid cats, Enzo and Rico. Later, they recruit Trellis, the son of the Elf King, as well as Luger, who now is no longer following the Elf King. While traveling, they are pursued by a bounty hunter elf sent by the Elf King, Gabilan, and are attacked by creatures called wyverns. In the process, Miskit and the robot Cogsley are swept off the ship by wyverns. When they arrive at Cielis, Gabilan sabotages them but is defeated by Emily and Trellis. A stonekeeper named Max Griffin tells them that Emily will shortly be tested and be part of the Guardian Council.

Vol. Four: After Emily and company find the city of Cielis, they attempt to see the Guardian Council, but they slowly discover that something strange is going on in the city and it concerns the city's most powerful secret. Emily is sent to the void, which is a simulation which the stonekeepers have to pass. If they fail, they die. Meanwhile, Leon, Enzo and Rico find out that the Guardian Council was actually dead but just simply re-animated to trick them into coming, and, with the help of a girl named Alyson, they rescue Trellis and Luger from jail in Cielis. Meanwhile, Cogsley and Miskit are taken by a stonekeeper named Vigo, and they also adopt a baby wyvern called Dagno. Emily, Max and the other tested stonekeepers find the last shard of the Mother Stone, a stone that was used to create all of the amulets. The other stonekeepers turn to stone, and Emily finds out that they were simply reanimated dead stonekeepers. Max is revealed to be working for the Elf King, and brings the Mother Stone to him.

Vol. Five: In the beginning, Max is having a flashback of himself as a child. His best friend, an elf named Layra, has her parents to be sent to jail for being elves and the risk of them being the spies of the Elf King, even though they weren't and did a lot to help the city of Cielis. Max attempts to rescues them, but an airship kills them and Max destroys the ship and kills the pilots as well. He is sentenced to 50 years in the Ice Prison of Korthan, and attempts to escape but dies from the cold, yet resurrected by the Voice. Ever since, Max has been aiding the Elf King to destroy the people of Cielis for revenge. After Emily and Vigo, the stonekeepers became the last Guardian Council, the city guard begins preparations to fight the Elf Army, but the enemy gets stronger and the Elf King begins to use the last shard of the Mother Stone to create his own Guardian Council. Navin and Cogsley enter a course that uses mech suits and airships to fight the Elf King, and Navin and Alyson attempt to fight Max in an airship, and are almost killed until Emily and Vigo fight him. When the ship is shot and all four stonekeepers (including Trellis) fall down, Trellis is secretly attempting to travel to the past to stop the terrible things that the elves did, which was influenced by the elf king, while he was actually just going into his memories. Emily is able to wake him up from the memories of the elves and Max. In the end they find out that Max and the Elf King are already dead, but are being possessed by the Voice of the amulet, who is influencing them to making bad decisions.

Vol. Six: While Max promises the Elf King to kill the other stonekeepers once and for all, he secretly is recruiting them to enter their memories so they can kill the voice with their powers and the mountain giant, Chronos. Meanwhile, the elves fire on the academy's ship where Alyson Hunter and 2 other recruits are to fly their mech suits to the city of Lucien, which has already been destroyed by Max. The 3 are then joined by Navin when they crash-land. They are repeatedly pursued by shadows, gas organisms that need hosts to survive. They are saved by the elf Riva Ash who shows them that the inhabitants of Lucien have moved underground, as well as the Resistance and Balan. When shadows attack, Riva attempts to evacuate everyone on the underground trains. Navin, Alyson and Riva's advisor, the robot general Pil, get rid of as much shadows as they could but then have to escape to a portal where they borrow mech suits from Pil's parents. The 3 then travel to Frontera, the Resistance's base, to attempt to launch an attack on the Elf King's kingdom, Valcor. Meanwhile, the 4 stonekeepers arrive at a memory of Valcor, where the Voice lives. When they fail to kill him, and Chronos is killed, Max accecpts his fate of dying, seeing that he was already dead but simply a corpse being kept alive by the Voice. Before dying, he tells them to visit Algos island for Trellis. The leftover three stonekeepers arrive in the real world and save a ship full of Elf King followers that was about to explode, and are able to make them faithful to prince Trellis. They then encounter Riva, who explains what happened to Navin.

Vol. Seven: Emily, Trellis and Vigo travel to Algos Island, where they find Gabilan, the Elf that the Elf King sent after them during their search for Cielis. With his help, Emily and Trellis enter memories of Trellis' childhood that his father had Gabilan take away from Trellis, and learn that the "dark shadows" and thus, the Voice, were created by refugees from a dead planet who are intent on taking over Alledia. Emily is lured by the Voice into a memory that turns out to be from the man who was inadvertently responsible for her father's death. There, the Voice is able to cause Emily to partially give in to feelings of hatred and revenge, enough so that the stone's power appears to completely take over her as it did with Luger, turning into a firebird and escaping into the real world so it can use her as part of the shadows' plan. Trellis reunites with the crew, and Gabilan appears to have died. Meanwhile, Navin and Alyson work at a restaurant to get enough money to buy tickets for airships in order to get to Frontera, but they are pursued by bounty hunters of the Elf King. Riva Ash's friends help them escape to Frontera. Navin and Aly reunite with Miskit and Leon, and together with other members of the Resistance's clandestine space program, blast off into space to enter the Resistance's other base and to fight the shadows from there.

Main characters

Emily Hayes

Emily Hayes is a stonekeeper and the predecessor of her great-grandfather, Silas Charnon, as well as a leading member of the Resistance and the remaining Guardian Council. She is the daughter of Karen and David, and the older sister of Navin.

Described as a "natural born leader", she has demonstrated herself to be a very skilled and adept fighter and stonekeeper, even if she has much to learn about the true nature of her stone. Her goal upon entering Alledia was to find a cure for the illness Karen had who was stung by an arachnopod, but she remained in Alledia after her mother was cured in order to lend support in the fight against the Elf King and later the Voice.

After the death of her father, Emily and her family travel to her great-grandfather Silas's house. After saving her mother and curing her from the arachnopod's poison as well, she became more comfortable with being a 'hero', and claims that even if she did intend to go back to Earth, the amulet would stop her, but in the third book this is revealed to be false. She recruits Trellis and becomes one of his only friends. In the sixth book, when Max Griffin accepts his fate of dying, she tries to prevent that, which shows another decision affected from her compassionate side. Emily is usually very resistant to the Voice, except in the seventh book; when the Voice finds out about her longing for her dead father, he causes her to give in to her desire for revenge against the man that accidentally caused the death of David Hayes, and she turns into a firebird and becomes an unwilling servant of the Voice. Her brother is Navin and her mother is Karen Hayes. She is shown to have red hair.

Navin Hayes

At the beginning of the series, Navin is childish and a little immature, but matures over the series. His liking of video games has given him talents with flying and even mech suits. This talent has caused Navin to perform five feats that help the group. In the first book, he flies the miniature plane while the others fight. In the second book, he defeats Luger by controlling the house-robot of Silas. In the third, when Enzo's robot looses control of the Luna Moth ship, he quickly takes control and prevents them from falling. In the fifth one, he attempts to defeat Max in one of the ships, but ultimately fails. Finally, in the sixth book, he helps defeat the shadows in the cleaning mech suits. He is caring for his friends and family, and always gets worried when Emily is in danger, which is shown when, in the second book, a Gadobah tree predicts his sister falling, he goes recklessly to rescue her. When she does fall in that book, he saves her. He is shown to have brown hair, resembling his father.

Trellis

Trellis is the son of the Elf King and younger brother of Luger, as well as a stonekeeper and intended successor to the throne of Gulfen. After failing to capture Emily and having his act of interception at Gondoa Mountain seen as treason, Trellis and his brother, Luger abandoned the King altogether, eventually joining Emily and the Resistance after Emily defended them from the Elf King's soldiers.

Originally, he played the antagonist in the first two, but in the third book his purposes were revealed. In the first book, he had attempted to force Emily into defeating his father, the Elf King. In the third book, Emily saves him from bodyguards from the Elf King's guards when they attempted to arrest him, using a stunning staff to electrocute him. He tells Emily that his father is being possessed by something, and that he wanted to destroy whatever was controlling his dead body by destroying the amulet of the king. In the fifth book, they find out that he was being controlled by the Voice. In the sixth book, Trellis becomes warmer the crew of the Luna Moth, especially Luger, playing a game of Othello together and exchanging witty banter. Both did not know they were brothers till book three since Gabilan stole their memories. Trellis starts trusting Emily after her step to save him in book 5, eventually developing a strong bond of trust with her and becoming close. When he and Emily enter his memories in the seventh book, he finds out that he got his scar when the king, who had abnormally sharp and long fingernails, scratched his eye with it.

Like most elves, Trellis has grey skin, but with a lighter tone. He is shown to have long white hair, and in the beginning of the series had sharp teeth, but that was removed after the fifth book. He has a long stitched up scar on his left eye. Trellis is especially talented in defending with the amulet.

Trellis believes his father has long been dead and is under the possession of his stone. His goal is to destroy the stone, and prevent any further harm to his nation, Gulfen, and the rest of Alledia. Trellis' skill as a stonekeeper lie in his ability to defend.Trellis has very few memories from his childhood. Many significant events from his past are revealed to him when Trellis tries to enter the Void in book 5, as he finds out he was primarily raised by his kind uncle and when he entered his memories in book 7, learning about how he received his scar and the fate of his late uncle.

Leon Redbeard

Leon Redbeard, like many other citizens of Kanalis, had a curse during his human childhood, causing him to become a humanoid fox. When his father, guard of the jail that the Elf King was kept imprisoned, got killed when the Elf King lost control of his powers, Leon decided to avenge him and worked for the Guardian Council to defeat him, and so looked for Emily since that was who the Council wanted. In the second and third book, he is able to teach Emily basic lessons on how to wield the amulet's power, in which she now carries a staff that focuses the amulet's energy. In the fourth book, he helps Enzo and Alyson Hunter free Trellis and Luger from Cielis jail. He makes short cameo appearances in the fifth, sixth and seventh book.

Vigo Light

Vigo first appears in the fourth book, when Cogsley and Miskit fall off the Luna moth and end up at his house. As a child, he befriended Max Griffin, who often had no friends due to his respect to elves, even though the specific elves he was loyal to did a lot to help the city of Cieli's. Soon after he joined the guardian council(the protectors of Cieli's)he left because the council made its decisions based on its fears. When he grew up, Vigo married someone, but after his wife died, his son attempted to travel into the past to revive her, a technique that Silas had made a theory of, when really he was entering his memories. He stayed in his memories for months, never waking up, then died, causing much grief to Vigo. In the other books, he tries his best to help the crew of the Luna Moth. He originally disliked Trellis, but became neutral to him in the sixth book. In the seventh book, he mentioned that he didn't like leaving Emily with Gabilan, as he was once a father and had a father's instinct. He has a grey beard, and has a blue overcoat.

Max Griffen

Max Griffen appears first in the third book to assist Emily on her way to Cielis after she activated a beacon, then in the fourth book at the academy of Stonekeepers where he, Emily and two other young Stonekeepers were transported to the caverns of Cielis where in completing multiple tasks came to be in the main chamber containing the mother stone, where he stole it and showed his true loyalty to the nation of the Elves, and lastly in the sixth when he spies on the resistance by hiding in "clouds" while Navin is learning in the colossus program. He sends a servant to request the Guardian Council's help, when he talks to them asking them to help him fight off the voice. Then they all enter the void and talk to the voice where it promptly undoes all that it has done killing him. His final words were very important: "Go to Algos Island."

Volumes

On October 3, 2014, Kibuishi confirmed on Twitter that the series will have nine volumes.^[4]

Film adaptation

In November 2015, 20th Century Fox and Temple Hill Entertainment will produce an adaptation of the graphic novel. Aron Coleite will write the script.^[5]

References

External links

• Official website
• Amulet on IMDb