Brandon Mull

Brandon Mull was born on November 8, 1974, in Utah, but spent much of his childhood in Clayton, California, where he went through elementary, middle and high school. As a young adult he served a two-year mission in Chile for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then studied at Brigham Young University in Utah.

At BYU, comedy was his most visible talent. Mull led the sketch group Divine Comedy, which performed for campus crowds. Before books paid the bills, he worked a string of very different jobs: comedian, filing clerk, patio installer, movie promoter, copywriter and, briefly, chicken stacker. His first novel never got published.

His break came through a side door. Mull was doing marketing for the film Saints and Soldiers when the production company was acquired by a publisher. That's how the Fablehaven manuscript landed at Shadow Mountain, which released it on June 14, 2006. The premise clicked right away: two siblings spend the summer at their grandparents' place and discover the property is a secret preserve for magical creatures, with strict rules and real consequences for breaking them.

The series grew one book a year. Rise of the Evening Star (2007), Grip of the Shadow Plague (2008), Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary (2009) and Keys to the Demon Prison (2010) completed the first run, each longer and darker than the last. In 2017 Mull returned to that world with Dragonwatch, which he calls the second half of Fablehaven: five books through Return of the Dragon Slayers (2021), with dragons now at the center of the conflict. In 2025 came The Gorgon's Fury, the first book in a spinoff starring the satyrs Newel and Doren.

He opened other doors along the way. The Candy Shop War (2007) mixes magical sweets with a neighborhood adventure. The Beyonders trilogy, starting with A World Without Heroes (2011), pulls a boy from our world into another. Five Kingdoms, beginning with Sky Raiders (2014), runs five books. He also wrote Wild Born (2013), the first book in Scholastic's multi-author Spirit Animals series, and picture books like Pingo.

The humor from his stage days shows up almost everywhere. Mull's books have bickering siblings, characters who crack jokes in the middle of danger and tightly built magic rules: break a treaty and you pay for it. Underneath, the same themes return: courage, responsibility and the cost of curiosity. It's fantasy written for readers roughly 9 to 14 years old, and plenty of parents and other adults have come along for the ride.

Fablehaven was optioned for film or TV in 2013, and in December 2024 Angel Studios announced a movie based on the first book, slated for 2027. Mull lives in Alpine, Utah, and keeps writing new adventures.