A mare’s nest of storylines, unencumbered by internal logic or any signs of credible resolution.
A secret veterinary hospital for mythical creatures and a hidden island run by dragons and seraphim form stages on which the author shovels heaps of unrelated, undeveloped story ideas.
During the week, 12-year-old Joe Copper, who lives with his widowed mom and her friend “Aunt” Rose, is viciously bullied at school. On Sundays, he finds himself delivering shipments of kitty litter and hard liquor to Merrynether Mansion, a clinic run by ancient Veronica Merrynether and her hulking associate Heinrich for patients ranging from a fire-breathing wyvern with hiccups to a wee alcohol-loving cluricaun with a thick Irish accent and a gift for invective. Meanwhile a huge, hairy beast is sighted haunting surrounding Ringwood Forest, which evil tycoon Argoyle Redwar is leveling for an industrial park. The villain is also seeking to extort from Veronica the location of Pyronesia, the island from which her patients come. Furthermore, Gnauserous, the dragon queen of Pyronesia, is a hair away from leading her armies out to (by unspecified means) exterminate humanity. West-Bulford wedges in further elements, from silly food (Flubbage, aka “Flatulensia Stenchorendous”) to flying, all-seeing, slime-throwing eyeballs called furdlewumps, for comic relief, then gathers his cast for a climactic battle that leaves the island littered with corpses and sown with land mines.
A mare’s nest of storylines, unencumbered by internal logic or any signs of credible resolution. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1605425-20-7
Page Count: 487
Publisher: Medallion Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Awful on a number of levels—but tidily over at last.
The rebellion against an evil archmage and his bowler-topped minions wends its way to a climax.
Dispatching five baddies on the first two pages alone, wand-waving villain-exterminator Vega Jane gathers a motley army of fellow magicals, ghosts, and muggles—sorry, “Wugmorts”—for a final assault on Necro and his natty Maladons. As Necro repeatedly proves to be both smarter and more powerful than Vega Jane, things generally go badly for the rebels, who end up losing their hidden refuge, many of their best fighters, and even the final battle. Baldacci is plainly up on his ancient Greek theatrical conventions, however; just as all hope is lost, a divinity literally descends from the ceiling to referee a winner-take-all duel, and thanks to an earlier ritual that (she and readers learn) gives her a do-over if she’s killed (a second deus ex machina!), Vega Jane comes away with a win…not to mention an engagement ring to go with the magic one that makes her invisible and a new dog, just like the one that died heroically. Measuring up to the plot’s low bar, the narrative too reads like low-grade fanfic, being laden with references to past events, characters who only supposedly died, and such lines as “a spurt of blood shot out from my forehead,” “they started falling at a rapid number,” and “[h]is statement struck me on a number of levels.”
Awful on a number of levels—but tidily over at last. (glossary) (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-26393-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Who can't love a story about a Nigerian-American 12-year-old with albinism who discovers latent magical abilities and saves the world? Sunny lives in Nigeria after spending the first nine years of her life in New York. She can't play soccer with the boys because, as she says, "being albino made the sun my enemy," and she has only enemies at school. When a boy in her class, Orlu, rescues her from a beating, Sunny is drawn in to a magical world she's never known existed. Sunny, it seems, is a Leopard person, one of the magical folk who live in a world mostly populated by ignorant Lambs. Now she spends the day in mundane Lamb school and sneaks out at night to learn magic with her cadre of Leopard friends: a handsome American bad boy, an arrogant girl who is Orlu’s childhood friend and Orlu himself. Though Sunny's initiative is thin—she is pushed into most of her choices by her friends and by Leopard adults—the worldbuilding for Leopard society is stellar, packed with details that will enthrall readers bored with the same old magical worlds. Meanwhile, those looking for a touch of the familiar will find it in Sunny's biggest victories, which are entirely non-magical (the detailed dynamism of Sunny's soccer match is more thrilling than her magical world saving). Ebulliently original. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-01196-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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