Review: Clementine Lemons & the Lost Stones of Dohi by Ireland Von Mueller

Review: Clementine Lemons & the Lost Stones of Dohi by Ireland Von Mueller

Book 1: The Earth Stone

Erin Miller Books, 2025

**From Sept 16-20 head over to my Instagram page for a Giveaway. The author and publisher were kind enough to provide a copy to give to one lucky winner!**

My Quick Take: A smart, engaging middle grade fantasy that introduces a mysterious quest for artifacts that hold the key to healing a troubled world.

Thanks to Erin Miller Books and the author for a gifted copy.

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It is always a pleasure to pick up a novel that you know little about and be offered such a reading treat that it is hard to put the book down. This is a part of my reading life that I value the most. Even better when the author is a local writer who is publishing their book with a small press, and it’s a debut novel. When I opened Okanagan Valley-based author Ireland Von Mueller's Clementine Lemons & The Lost Stones of Dohi I started reading and was transported into a fantasy world that was fun and interesting to know, and drew me in right away.

Clementine Lemons is a 13-year-old girl in Victoria, BC who leads a quiet life, and loves her adventure novels. The first paragraph gave a marvelous sense of who Clem is:

“Clementine Lemons sat alone at the Pandora Avenue bus stop, completely and utterly lost in the pages of the mystery novel wedged against her knees. Now and then, she’d run her fingers through her long dark hair or casually fidget with the tassels on the scarf draped loosely around her neck. But beyond that, she was oblivious to the world, and the world was oblivious to her.”

When she finds a very cool old box with a fanciful carving on the lid and four locked drawers without a key in a decrepit antique store, she quickly discovers its link to the mysterious Empire of Dohi. The action switches to Dohi, where Andro, almost 14, lives a life of hardship in a time of oppression in his region. He works long hours in a grimy rice field, in a city devastated by pollution and poverty, under the watchful eye of the Black Peacock regime. He supports his elderly grandmother and young sister, and the only precious possession they own is an old, ornamental box. In Dohi, most people don’t have the means to be educated, and “science” is a concept that Andro doesn’t know; he ascribes many things to “magic” instead. His newfound mentor, the old Ablikim, knows about books and science, and a conversation between him and Andro when discussing the box’s properties provided one of my favourite exchanges:

“What’s science?” It was Andro’s turn to look confused. The old man had lost him at “there’s no such thing as magic or Sorcerers.”

“Verifiable magic,” Ablikim sighed before launching into a detailed explanation.

Soon, Clementine and Andro are connected by some sort of portal that connects their two dimensions via the space inside the box. At this point, author Von Mueller had me completely hooked, and I had trouble putting the book down. Without giving a lot of details away, suffice to say that a legendary myth provides clues to the puzzle of the Stones of Dohi that may provide a path to freedom for the Empire. All Clementine has to do is follow the clues and agree to help.

While there is plenty of action, new worlds, and adventure, what gives this story life is also the life lessons that Clem grapples with. She’s quiet, likes to read, and is more comfortable being in the background of the action. Her idea of adventure is to read about her favourite heroine Adriana Jones than to be the adventurous protagonist of her own story. She’s a bystander and not the person who steps up. But when an eccentric homeless man nicknamed The Professor drops a rock into a puddle and shows Clem how the ripples move a leaf to the edge of the pond, he asks her:

“Are you the rock, or are you the leaf?...There are only two types of people in this world. Either you drift along, waiting for someone else to push you to shore, or you dare to make waves. Do you choose to make an impact or drift aimlessly through this life? The answer is that simple.”

“What if you’re too scared to be a rock?” Clem’s honesty shocked even herself.

The Professor raised his eyebrows and tossed another rock into the puddle. “A rock is a rock whether it believes it’s a rock or not. It cannot change the nature of what it is,” he answered. “Besides, the rock’s job is easy. All it does is make ripples. The magic is in the ripples.”

The story continues when Clem visits a new world of Pangier as the mystery of the box and the Stones of Dohi continues. Here, she has adventures aplenty, makes new friends and fights fearsome enemies. She also continues to learn about herself, and grow as a person. I loved that she begins to see what hardship really means, as she compares her own life of privilege to that of Andro. Von Mueller doesn’t use a heavy hand to show this; rather, she lets the story teach Clem naturally, and we as readers are able to experience Clem’s emerging maturity. Von Mueller gets the stuff of growing up really well: the jumbled emotions, the messy feelings. Not everyone is perfect in this novel, especially Clem, and that makes her a very relatable heroine.

The book is just plain fun and engaging, and Von Mueller’s world building is good, very appropriate for the middle grade set. I also liked that she addresses issues of racism and tolerance in the book, again through story, in a way that will appeal to younger readers and seems naturalistic. I’d been very much enjoying Andro’s Dohi plotline, and the book deviates away from that in the second half to focus on Clem’s quest. Though I missed Dohi, I admit to getting caught up in Clem’s adventures to find the stone. Seriously, she goes through so much swamp-hiking and muddyness, and fending off strange critters that I don’t think I could have done what she did!

To add to the story, there’s art. I love the design of the book, and the cover art is a big part of that, by Andrew Duggan (andrewmaps.com). Inside, I was delighted to see a few black and white line-drawings by artist Dorreen Smith.

As a cool bonus, there is some great add-on material online at ClementineLemons.com. You can learn more about the characters, and the regions and cities that are mentioned in the book. There’s a quiz, and downloadable colouring sheets. All of this will add to the reading experience for those middle-graders in your life. Or, maybe, for you too!

This is the first in a series of books, with the Earth Stone the first of five stones that Clem will have to find. Andro’s character in Dohi returned near the end, and I’m sure will be a through-line in the rest of the series, and I look forward to seeing where the story takes me, and curious if some of the characters from this book might reappear in the next books. I think this book will appeal to anyone, but it would make a wonderful read for any middle-grade kids, with that online material as an extra bonus. And it means supporting an emerging author and a small press as well. Wins all around!