``Eeulaliaaaaaaa!'' echoes the battle cry of Sunflash the Mace, badger warlord and champion of all that is good. Accompanied by his faithful scout, the kestrel Skarlath, Sunflash sets out to vanquish the evil ferret Swartt Sixclaw, who had enslaved him in his youth. Meanwhile, Sixclaw's bad-seed son is raised lovingly by a mousemaid at Redwall Abbey. However, in spite of his upbringing, he follows his father's wicked ways and is cast out of the abbey forever. The action climaxes in a pitched battle with Sixclaw's horde at Salamandastron, Sunflash's mountain stronghold. Convincing characterizations (including strong female participants), well-realized settings (accompanied by mouth- watering feasts), grand dialogue, inventive action—in this eighth offering in the popular Redwall series, Jacques (The Bellmaker, 1995, not reviewed, etc.) will more than please his fans. With the usual black-and-white chapter decorations throughout, the book is written to formula—good trumps evil, but has to count at least one important loss—and many will rate it among the best in the series. (Fiction. 9-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-22914-0
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
Sweet, if unremarkable.
A gentle “Sleeping Beauty”–inspired tale of teens training to defend a baby princess.
Fifteen-year-old Miri, beloved stepdaughter of the king, is freshly in love—with her baby sister. As the novel opens, Aurora’s christening looms, and any Disney fan will know what’s coming. However, this is Miri’s story, and pages of first-person description and exposition come before those events. Tirendell, like all kingdoms, has Light and Dark Fae. Dark Fae feed off human misery and sadness, but their desire to cause harm for self-benefit is tempered by the Rules. The Rules state that they can only act against humans under certain conditions, one being that those who have crossed them, for example, by failing to invite them to a royal christening, are fair game. Miri steps up instinctively at the moment of crisis and both deflects the curse and destroys the Dark Fae, which leads to the bulk of the novel: an extended and detailed day-to-day journey with Miri and her five largely indistinguishable new friends as they train in combat and magic to protect Aurora from future threats. With limited action and a minimal plot, this story lacks wide appeal but is notable for the portrait of deep familial love and respect, while the brief, episodic adventures (including talking animals) offer small pleasures. All characters are implied to be White.
Sweet, if unremarkable. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5745-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
Much rousing sturm und drang, though what’s left after the dust settles is a heap of glittering but disparate good parts...
Scott tops off his deservedly popular series with a heaping shovelful of monster attacks, heroic last stands, earthquakes and other geological events, magic-working, millennia-long schemes coming to fruition, hearts laid bare, family revelations, transformations, redemptions and happy endings (for those deserving them).
Multiple plotlines—some of which, thanks to time travel, feature the same characters and even figures killed off in previous episodes—come to simultaneous heads in a whirl of short chapters. Flamel and allies (including Prometheus and Billy the Kid) defend modern San Francisco from a motley host of mythological baddies. Meanwhile, in ancient Danu Talis (aka Atlantis), Josh and Sophie are being swept into a play to bring certain Elders to power as the city’s downtrodden “humani” population rises up behind Virginia Dare, the repentant John Dee and other Immortals and Elders. The cast never seems unwieldy despite its size, the pacing never lets up, and the individual set pieces are fine mixtures of sudden action, heroic badinage and cliffhanger cutoffs. As a whole, though, the tale collapses under its own weight as the San Francisco subplots turn out to be no more than an irrelevant sideshow, and climactic conflicts take place on an island that is somehow both a historical, physical place and a higher reality from which Earth and other “shadowrealms” are spun off.
Much rousing sturm und drang, though what’s left after the dust settles is a heap of glittering but disparate good parts rather than a cohesive whole. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-73535-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
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