by V.L. Burgess ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2012
Fantasy-loving boys (and girls) will be enthralled by this slim, action-packed tale—and the sequels likely to follow.
Thirteen-year-old Tom Hawkins must find the most powerful weapon ever created and save the world.
When a pirate with a wooden peg leg arrives at Thomas’ school one stormy night, he delivers a mysterious map, a guide to the "Beyond" and the way to find the Sword of Five Kingdoms, which has been missing for 1,000 years. When its hilt has been reunited with five special stones, the rightful bearer of the sword can put an end to the reign of the evil ruler Keegan. Umbrey the pirate leads Tom through a window to a new world, where Tom meets up with a twin brother he never knew he had and with Mudge and Willa. Together they form a band of travelers on a quest to find the sword, with many a sword fight, swamp dog and dragon along the way. Freely borrowing from Treasure Island, Arthurian tales, The Lord of the Rings and other classic adventure and fantasy tales, Burgess reworks common themes of old maps, powerful wizards, evil rulers, dragons, a hidden sword and a boy king to fashion the first offering from a publisher out to create works that will appeal especially to boys.
Fantasy-loving boys (and girls) will be enthralled by this slim, action-packed tale—and the sequels likely to follow. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9854810-0-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Move Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2013
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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by Jasmine Warga ; illustrated by Matt Rockefeller ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2022
The intelligences here may be (mostly) artificial, but the feelings are genuine and deep.
A Mars rover discovers that it has a heart to go with its two brains.
Warga follows her cybernetic narrator from first awareness to final resting place—and stony indeed will be any readers who remain unmoved by the journey. Though unable to ask questions of the hazmats (named for their suits) assembling it in a NASA lab, the rover, dubbed Resilience by an Ohio sixth grader, gets its first inklings of human feelings from two workers who talk to it, play it music, and write its pleasingly bug-free code. Other machines (even chatty cellphones) reject the notion that there’s any real value to emotions. But the longer those conversations go, the more human many start sounding, particularly after Res lands in Mars’ Jezero Crater and, with help from Fly, a comically excitable drone, and bossy satellite Guardian, sets off on twin missions to look for evidence of life and see if an older, silenced rover can be brought back online. Along with giving her characters, human and otherwise, distinct voices and engaging personalities, the author quietly builds solid relationships (it’s hardly a surprise when, after Fly is downed in a dust storm, Res trundles heroically to the rescue in defiance of orders) on the way to rest and joyful reunions years later. A subplot involving brown-skinned, Arabic-speaking NASA coder Rania unfolds through her daughter Sophia’s letters to Res.
The intelligences here may be (mostly) artificial, but the feelings are genuine and deep. (afterword, resources) (Science fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311392-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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