The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha

Lloyd Alexander's The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha is a funny, clever adventure for 11 year olds about a lazy boy who wakes up king of a country he's never heard of.

What happens

Lukas is the town idler of Zara-Petra. When the carpenter offers him an honest job, he clutches his stomach and explains that work makes him ill. (The only cure, apparently, is sausages.)

Then a scruffy travelling conjurer called Battisto asks for a volunteer. Lukas spends his only silver penny on the show, gets his head pushed into a pot of water... and comes up drowning in a real sea, a very long way from home.

He's washed up on a beach, chased by soldiers with curved swords and knocked out cold. When he wakes, he's in a palace. The court astrologer predicted that the new King of Abadan would rise from the sea. So that's him, then.

At first it's hilarious. Lukas eats everything in sight, swims in the Royal Baths and gets scrubbed so clean it alarms him. His muttered comments about the courtiers are the best bits. The Grand Vizier, he decides, talks like a silk handkerchief.

But being king turns out to be more serious than he hoped. That smooth Vizier wants a war to seize the gold in the mountains of a neighbouring people. The only person who'll tell Lukas the truth is Nur-Jehan, a captured girl from those mountains, who thinks he's a fool and says so to his face.

You're right beside Lukas as he works it all out. He opens a law book for the first time in his life and is horrified by what it allows. Watching the joker start to care is really satisfying.

There's some grim stuff in the background that's good to know about. Nur-Jehan is held as a slave and expects a beating for talking to him. The law books list cruel punishments, and the astrologer calmly explains that a Grand Vizier can't be sacked, only beheaded. It's told lightly, with a war brewing behind it all.

The language is rich and playful, with lots of grand titles and sayings to enjoy. It suits a confident reader who likes a bit of wit with their adventure.

What to read next

If they love the palaces and the plotting, The City Beyond the Stars takes them to another city of sultans and sorcerers, where a scheming chief alchemist has burned the great library to the ground.