The fight choreography needs work but otherwise, a promising debut and series opener.
An English schoolboy hones both wits and breaking-and-entering skills after the family butler enlists him for a series of dangerous secret missions.
Oliver, 12-year-old scion of the head of Diplexito Engineering and Combustibles Ltd., is stunned to learn that the forbidding Mr. Scant is a mysterious burglar popularly known as the Ruminating Claw—for the bladed mechanical contraption he wears on one hand. This revelation is followed by mounting excitement as the white lad learns that Scant is really engaged in returning artifacts stolen from various museums by a secret group of would-be mages known as the Woodhouselee Society. Better yet, Scant wants him along to help! Ensuing nighttime outings to the British Museum and elsewhere give Oliver not only an eyeful of awesome martial feats from Scant, but heartening tests of his own previously untried courage as dust-ups with baddies led by cleaver-wielding giantess Valkyrie build to a climactic imbroglio featuring dirigibles (this is 1910, with some alterations) and a heavily armed “land ironclad.” A last-minute ally named Cai Zhao-Ji and some of the aforementioned bad guys, who belong to the Asian Tri-Loom crime syndicate, are the only characters of color. Methods’ fights are the sort in which there’s always time for dialogue, combatants don’t die or even bleed when they’re wounded, and the deadliest adversary abruptly withers under a good scolding.
The fight choreography needs work but otherwise, a promising debut and series opener. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5124-0579-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Kibuishi gives his epic tale a hefty nudge toward its long-building climax while giving readers plenty of reasons to stick...
Stonekeeper Emily frees the elves from their monstrous masked ruler and sets out to rejoin her brother and mother in the series’ penultimate episode.
The multistranded storyline picks up with Emily’s return to the world of Alledia. Now a fiery, destructive phoenix struggling to regain control of her actions, Emily goes on to follow her brother Navin and allies as they battle invading shadows on the nearby world of Typhon, then switches back to human form for a climactic confrontation with the Elf King—in the course of which Emily rips off his mask to a chorus of “ERGH!! NO!!! GRAH! RRGH!! AAAGH!” to expose a rousingly hideous face. Cute animal heads on many figures (the result of a curse) and a scene with benevolent-looking trees provide at least a bit of relief from the grim expressions that all the human and humanoid elven characters almost invariably wear. But along with emphatic sound effects, the battle and action scenes in the cleanly drawn, if sometimes cramped, panels feature huge blasts of fire or energy, intricately detailed giant robots, weirdly eyeless monsters, and wild escapades aplenty to keep the pace’s pedal to the metal. Aliens and AIs in the cast come in a variety of hues, elves are a uniform gray, and except for a brief encounter between Emily and a slightly darker lad, the (uncursed) humans default to white.
Kibuishi gives his epic tale a hefty nudge toward its long-building climax while giving readers plenty of reasons to stick around for it. (Graphic fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-545-85002-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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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