Too many plot twists, arch narrative asides, and last-minute fortune reversals make this adventure plod.
Gwendolyn travels through a library of tropes and narrative conventions to fight world-controlling villains.
Gwendolyn Gray, whose vermilion hair stands out in a world where most folks are blond, is dissatisfied with her City. At the end of series opener The Marvelous Adventures of Gwendolyn Gray (2018), when she traveled into a fictional world of airship pirates, she’d destroyed the mind-controlling Lambents that kept her City docile. And yet, even without the mind control, the City is still a toxic place full of conformity. It’s almost a relief when the Faceless Gentlemen reappear and chase Gwendolyn back into magical worlds. This time, she ends up in Faeoria, where Titania and Oberon reign, and a human “inventress” with clockwork wings takes Gwendolyn under them. To save herself and her City from various wicked forces, Gwendolyn must control her depression, mania, and anxiety. (These are mostly portrayed as a “sickness of the spirit” she must learn to manage as normal mental illness, but they are tied uncomfortably into magic and metaphor as well). The inventress protects Gwendolyn through a series of magical training montages, then sends her out into the (overwhelmingly white) multiverse to fight the baddies. A smart-alecky narrator breaks the fourth wall like a wrecking ball, with frequent metafictional asides and unobtrusive fixation on the age of the 13-year-old protagonist.
Too many plot twists, arch narrative asides, and last-minute fortune reversals make this adventure plod. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63163-435-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Jolly Fish Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
However tried and true, the Harry Potter–esque elements and set pieces don’t keep this cumbersome coming-of-age tale afloat,...
Full-blown middle-volume-itis leaves this continuation of the tale of a teenage elf who has been genetically modified for so-far undisclosed purposes dead in the water.
As the page count burgeons, significant plot developments slow to a trickle. Thirteen-year-old Sophie manifests yet more magical powers while going head-to-head with hostile members of the Lost Cities Council and her own adoptive elvin father, Grady, over whether the clandestine Black Swan cabal, her apparent creators and (in the previous episode) kidnappers, are allies or enemies. Messenger tries to lighten the tone by dressing Sophie and her classmates at the Hogwarts-ian Foxfire Academy as mastodons for a silly opening ceremony and by having her care for an alicorn—a winged unicorn so magnificent that even its poop sparkles. It’s not enough; two sad memorial services, a trip to a dreary underground prison, a rash of adult characters succumbing to mental breakdowns and a frequently weepy protagonist who is increasingly shunned as “the girl who was taken” give the tale a soggy texture. Also, despite several cryptic clues and a late attack by hooded figures, neither the identity nor the agenda of the Black Swan comes closer to being revealed.
However tried and true, the Harry Potter–esque elements and set pieces don’t keep this cumbersome coming-of-age tale afloat, much less under way. (Fantasy 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-4596-3
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Less charming than the opener but does feature a thimbleful of moral quandary at its center.
Armed only with her magical sewing needle, foundling mouse Delphine sets out to confront the cruel rat king in this duology closer.
As vicious rat armies pillage the mouse realms in search of her and her pointy, long-hidden treasure, Delphine finds herself waging an inner war that parallels the outer one. According to dusty documents and other reputable sources, the needle’s good powers can be perverted, but she sees no other way except killing to stop evil rat King Midnight. While struggling with a grim determination to go over to the dark side that sets her at odds with her own fundamentally loving nature, Delphine threads her way along with loyal allies past various scrapes—only to come, climactically, face to face with not only her nemesis, but her own past. Moon stitches in flashbacks to fill out the details of a tragic old love triangle that reaches its fruition here and sews her tale up with a return to Château Desjardins just in time for Cinderella’s wedding and a celebratory rodentine ball in the chandelier overhead, and she leaves a fringe of epilogue hinting at further installments to come.
Less charming than the opener but does feature a thimbleful of moral quandary at its center. (secret codes) (Animal fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-368-04833-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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