This careening fantasy admixes two outsider seventh-graders, a mutable book, theoretical physics, renascent magic, battles of will and destiny’s role—plotted elaborately enough to make the drowsiest Potterite awaken. Jessica has long thought “something in her life was out of whack…that needed to be fixed.” She and stalwart Dale undergo dizzying adventures in their classist, sausage-factory town and its mysteriously enormous library. A cast of enigmatic, prescient adults parcels out advice as Jessica juggles possession of Her Lif (or, Her Life), a seeming biography (cum erratum) of her own existence, and key to her role in no less than saving the world. As Her Lif changes hands, a megalomaniac magician with political chops schemes for ultimate control, using arcane knowledge to cow the populace and warp space and time. Add several utterly enigmatic characters—a tiny, wizened man, huge dog Cerberus and a menacing, expanding orb of dark energy. Season with the turnabout fortunes of Jessica and Dale, and you’ve got, if not a perfectly honed fantasy (its resolution bristles with dei ex machinis), at least a rollicking, breakneck affair with—surprise!—an intimated sequel. (Fantasy. 9-12)
