Offering the comfort of familiarity, “Haberdasher” (aka Robyn Schneider) crafts an alternate-world boarding-school tale set in the loosely confederated Britonian Isles and featuring a trio of commoner lads admitted against all custom to the posh academy where Knights of the Realm are trained. Having met and bonded with each other and also with the obligatory spunky female sidekick (the Headmaster’s willful daughter Frankie), orphanage-raised foundling Henry joins Adam, compulsively verbal scion of a clan of Jewish bankers, and Rohan Mehta, a dark-skinned adoptee raised in a refined ducal household, in sticking it out despite the sneers of classmates, anonymous threats and an underhanded campaign to get them expelled. Along with much discussion about defying both class expectations and blatantly sexist gender roles, the author sets her central characters up with an entertaining line of banter as they gradually learn that they’re pawns in a broad intrigue in which seeming adversaries turn out to be allies and vice versa. With Henry’s discovery that the neighboring Nordlands (think Scotland, with a Stalinist overlay) is secretly preparing for war, the author also crafts a continuing plotline for sequels to this pleasant if unambitious opener. (Fantasy. 11-13)
