A tethered but appealing introduction to Cornish legend and Odyssean narrative.
A debut fantasy displaces a boy in time and sends him on a medieval quest.
Ten-year-old Alex Pitts lives in Penmellyn, a village on the coast of Cornwall, England. While witnessing a solar eclipse with his father, Alex is thrown back across centuries to the days of King Arthur. The landscape is the same but there is little sign of civilization. At first, Alex thinks he must be dreaming. He takes shelter in a fogou (a refuge fashioned from buried stone walls) but is attacked by barbarians and saved by a wolf. Alex then meets the wizard Merlin and is sent on a quest to reclaim King Bran’s cauldron of rebirth, which has been spirited away to Ireland. On his journey, Alex encounters witches, faeries, spriggans, and giants. Back in the present day, Alex’s dad begins looking for him, vowing not to return home until his son is found. These quests play out in parallel as, relentlessly, the months pass. Griffin draws on the fairy tale tradition of “tell, not show,” and takes pains to elucidate each thought, word, and deed. Despite this, the principal characters remain undistinguished. (Merlin is kindly but generic; Alex is all but forgettable, relying constantly on others to save him.) As with “Hansel and Gretel,” though, it is the myth and magic of the land that will draw readers in: the haggish witches; the faithful wolf; the ugly giant yearning for friendship. Griffin shows a deep appreciation of place, and it is Cornwall and Cornish folklore that take center stage. The modern-day action is, conversely, a weakness. The search that Alex’s dad undertakes intrudes on the main story, and readers will likely be less forgiving of the stage dialogue that prevails throughout this thread: “No. Look, Jory. I have a really powerful torch that will illuminate the whole cliff face. Let’s walk slowly along the shingle.” Nonetheless, the story’s moral—do not judge by appearances—is strongly presented, and middle-grade readers should find enough in Alex’s adventure to tug at their imaginations.
A tethered but appealing introduction to Cornish legend and Odyssean narrative.Pub Date: June 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4808-4704-0
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.
A teenage orphan enters a curious school and encounters mysteries and dangerous secrets in this first installment of a debut YA fantasy series.
Life in Croswald is about to change for 16-year-old orphan Ivy, a lowly castle maid in charge of the kitchen “scaldrons,” oven-heating, fire-breathing dragons. Fleeing the castle after a messy scaldron mishap, Ivy hops a strange conveyance that transports her to a school for potential quill-wielding, spell-casting “scrivenists.” (The author’s creative language—students are “sqwinches,” and “hairies” are lanterns housing fairies with luminous hair—is one of the book’s pleasures.) Learning that there is more to her gift for sketching than she realized, Ivy studies spells and the magical properties of inks and quills, but strange things keep happening. Why is an old scrivenist, long thought dead, working in secret? Why is the head of the oddly familiar school moving paintings to the “Forgetting Room” so that no one will remember they existed? How can Ivy get a look at a certain journal stored there, and what does it have to do with her recurrent dream? And why has Ivy drawn the interest of the Dark Queen of Croswald and her truly fearsome Cloaked Brood? The intrigue is layered with such whimsical inventions as one school lunchroom run by ghostly bad cooks and another by a jester who is best avoided, scrivenists who end their lives as tomes in a library, and small houses pulled by a gargantuan flying beast with its own weather system. Yes, there are many Harry Potter–ish elements: a school for young wand-wielders, quirky shops dealing in enchanted student supplies, eccentric characters, spells gone wrong, an evil pursuer. But Night’s blend of magic, danger, and suspense (and a touch of steampunk) is a well-realized, fresh fantasy world all its own, and Ivy is an appealing protagonist of relatable complexity. A few bobbles: Ivy seems to go without food for long stretches; the use of “effected” rather than “affected”; a professor who is both standing and perched on a chair.
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9969486-5-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Stories Untold Press
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In this riveting futuristic novel, Spaz, a teenage boy with epilepsy, makes a dangerous journey in the company of an old man and a young boy. The old man, Ryter, one of the few people remaining who can read and write, has dedicated his life to recording stories. Ryter feels a kinship with Spaz, who unlike his contemporaries has a strong memory; because of his epilepsy, Spaz cannot use the mind probes that deliver entertainment straight to the brain and rot it in the process. Nearly everyone around him uses probes to escape their life of ruin and poverty, the result of an earthquake that devastated the world decades earlier. Only the “proovs,” genetically improved people, have grass, trees, and blue skies in their aptly named Eden, inaccessible to the “normals” in the Urb. When Spaz sets out to reach his dying younger sister, he and his companions must cross three treacherous zones ruled by powerful bosses. Moving from one peril to the next, they survive only with help from a proov woman. Enriched by Ryter’s allusions to nearly lost literature and full of intriguing, invented slang, the skillful writing paints two pictures of what the world could look like in the future—the burned-out Urb and the pristine Eden—then shows the limits and strengths of each. Philbrick, author of Freak the Mighty (1993) has again created a compelling set of characters that engage the reader with their courage and kindness in a painful world that offers hope, if no happy endings. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-08758-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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