Fast-paced and entertaining, this fine trilogy opener will keep both fantasy and historical-fiction buffs turning the pages.
In the first book of Wolverton's fantasy trilogy, the hero embarks on a gripping high-seas adventure packed with action, magic, and folklore spanning East and West.
It’s the Age of Discovery, and 12-year-old Bren Owen is yearning for adventure. Unfortunately, he’s trapped in the city of his birth on the Britannia coast by the destiny his father has deemed for him: that Bren follow in his footsteps as a mapmaker. Bren’s attempts to stow away on ships bound for exotic lands are continuously foiled until a dying man gifts him with a talisman called a paiza that becomes his bargaining chip. Encoded with a secret map to the site of Marco Polo’s lost treasure, the paiza is just what Adm. Bowman, master of the Albatross, wants and hence becomes Bren’s ticket aboard the flagship of the Dutch Bicycle and Tulip Co. Onboard, Bren meets a Chinese girl named Mouse with the power to talk with animals, and together they crack the code and overcome unrelenting obstacles. After surviving a pirate attack, a mutiny, and, finally, being cast overboard, they find their way to an island long vanished from any map only to realize that their journey doesn’t end there. Wolverton deftly draws parallels between Western astrology and Chinese mythology and cleverly weaves fiction and legend into history.
Fast-paced and entertaining, this fine trilogy opener will keep both fantasy and historical-fiction buffs turning the pages. (maps) (Historical fantasy. 9-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-222190-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
A thrilling first installment in an adventurous new series.
An orphaned street urchin is recruited into an elite school for thieves.
In an alternate world where France is the dominant world power, 13-year-old Tom Morgan has had to scrimp, starve, and steal on the streets of London to survive. Born into a workhouse, he doesn’t know anything about his father, while his mother may have been from North Africa. One thing he does know is the sort of cruelty that awaits the poor who are sent to the workhouse, and he’s determined not to go back. But when their camp is raided and his friends are captured by workhouse agents, the only thing Tom can think of is how to get them out. Enter the Corsair, a cunning and mysterious man with a proposition: He wants to recruit Tom into Beaufort’s School for Deceptive Arts. From nabbing treasures to forging identity papers, Beaufort’s promises to teach Tom everything he needs to know to become a Shadow Thief and a member of the Shadow League, the secret global organization that helps keep the world’s political power in balance. But Beaufort’s has its own rules and secrets, and if Tom is to survive long enough to help his friends, he’ll need to figure them out quickly. Clever and gripping, this fast-paced boarding school story will appeal to fans of the Mysterious Benedict Society and Spy School series.
A thrilling first installment in an adventurous new series. (Adventure. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781665982283
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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