Skip and pass.
On her birthday, a teenager learns that she is one of the Crystal Cadets, a textbook group of young, magic-wielding heroines charged with saving the world from vague, clichéd darkness.
This series opener introduces Zoe to the other Crystal Cadets: Jasmine, Olivia, Gwen, Liz, Milena, and a sixth, who is used as a plot twist. They ride fabulous creatures like winged horses and giant butterflies and use magical tools to fight off creepy people with black eyes. Zoe seems only momentarily fazed to find her parents evidently possessed before being whisked away. Glib dialogue makes the book feel trite and superficial. “Nonny, nonny boo boo. You can’t catch me!” sings a young cadet as she faces off against what looks like a toothed shadow. Attempts at puns create cringe-worthy moments: “Looks like the crystal's out of the bag!” The story was originally published as a digital comic series, and Toole’s writing offers mostly choppy transitions and is further hampered by poor worldbuilding, logic, and back story. In what feels like a halfhearted stab at grounding the story, Olivia explains, “The darkness has been around forever. It feeds on bad stuff, like fear and greed and bad manners.” If both story and illustrations remind readers of Sailor Moon, that is about par for the course. O’Neill’s depictions are fair and in the vein of manga comics, though at times they look depthless.
Skip and pass. (Graphic fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63140-431-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Roar Comics/Lion Forge
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Fresh versions of some very old stories, well suited to reading aloud (but practice the names first!).
Ten stories retold from Hindu myth, free of any broad cultural context but handsomely packaged and illustrated.
Each tale offers a full slate of gods, heroes, monsters and (often) princesses, as well as plenty of action and, less often, a clever trick or dilemma. They incorporate such memorable images as the sea of milk in which Brahma floats before the Earth’s creation, the decapitated demon head that still chases the sun and moon (“But they would always slip out of Rahu’s neck, and light would return”) and the swayamvara ceremony of Princess Damayanti—in which all her suitors, human and immortal, must line up so that she can choose one. Though 10 tales is hardly enough to brush the surface of one of the world’s oldest religious traditions, Gavin does include a creation story, a flood story and also severely condensed versions of the central events of both the Ramayana and the Mahabarata epics. Pale borders decorating broad page margins harmonize with finely detailed scenes from Hall done in Indian-miniature style to give the volume an elegant look. The lack of source notes or explanations of such significant concepts as “incarnation” and Lord Brahma’s “three in one and one in three” identity make this an inadequate alternative to Madhur Jaffrey’s still unexcelled Seasons of Splendour (1985), though.
Fresh versions of some very old stories, well suited to reading aloud (but practice the names first!). (Mythology. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5564-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Templar/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
A patchwork.
A lad with “yin-yang” eyes lays two troubled ghosts to rest in this San Francisco Chinatown tale.
Jackson is haunted. He is visited by the ghosts of both his older brother, killed in the previous year’s Great Earthquake, and an unknown young woman whose appearance scares off the moviegoers attending his struggling family’s nickelodeon. The boy therefore determinedly sets off to find out what the spirits’ unfinished business might be. Jackson's investigation is prefaced by his experiences during the quake and punctuated with incidents of bullying and classroom taunting, a brief stint working in an opium parlor and collusion with an older cousin scheming to steal money and run away rather than be sent to China. The search ultimately leads to family revelations, the secretly buried bones of a young mother who died in childbirth and a ghostly “wedding” that precipitates an upbeat close. Though the story is well-stocked with specters and misadventures, it is hampered by choppy prose and a lack of distinct characters or sense of place.
A patchwork. (Historical fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-896580-96-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Tradewind Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
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