Readers may wish the words were food, so they could eat them up. And they may keep reading this series for just as long as...
Why live in Kansas when you can stay in Oz? Valente may well have wondered at Dorothy’s inexplicable decision.
At the end of The Girl Who Soared over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two (2013), 14-year-old September ran away from home to live in Fairyland. It was one of the best cliffhangers in recent fiction. Readers hoping for resolution will need to wait a little longer, as September hardly appears in this novel at all. As the title hints, it’s the story of a Changeling named Hawthorn, who takes the place of a human boy in Chicago. The book is full of Changelings of all stripes: trolls and humans and a girl made of wood. All of them, like September, feel out of place and far from home. Their stories are so sad and astonishing that even September—when she finally appears—may not be able to help them. If the ending feels a little abrupt, it’s because the story is so rich and complex that no book could resolve it. Even the minor supporting characters deserve novels of their own. Every page of this book contains at least one stunning sentence. Valente's descriptions of the human world make it sound like an exotic place, even when she just lists things to see: "diamonds and dinosaur bones and Canadian geese and the Cathedral of Notre Dame and ballpoint pens."
Readers may wish the words were food, so they could eat them up. And they may keep reading this series for just as long as people have been arguing about Oz. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-02349-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fitting capstone to an epic adventure replete with monsters, huge explosions, clever twists, and just deserts.
Seven young heroes, together at last and diverse in many ways, tackle armies of monsters as well as a cycle of warfare that has turned for thousands of years.
“League of Seven—full steam ahead!” In this headlong climax, Gratz adds the final two members to his intrepid band of world savers: tattooed, gray-skinned “science-pirate” Martine, whose synesthetic perceptions come in handy more than once; and Gonzalo, a blind young Texas Ranger with a talkative, intelligent raygun dubbed Señor X. Colorful as these and the other League members are, both in the story and in Helquist’s stylish portraits at each chapter’s head, the central figure remains Archie Dent, a superstrong lad snow-white of skin and hair and made from solid rock. Here, as previously, Archie’s internal struggles with rage and guilt parallel a string of awesomely destructive battles he and his allies have with the immortal Mangleborn and part-human Manglespawn led by tentacled archnemesis Philomena Moffett. Following a climactic battle at Gettysburg and a final dust-up with Moffett atop the great statue of Hiawatha in the harbor of New Rome (this is a very alternate, clockwork America), it only remains to expose the secret Septemberist Society, whose suppression of scientific research has misguidedly perpetuated the Mangleborn’s cyclical return down through the centuries.
A fitting capstone to an epic adventure replete with monsters, huge explosions, clever twists, and just deserts. (map) (Steampunk. 11-13)Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3824-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Starscape/Tom Doherty
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
While the subject matter is dark and at times raw, the message of the strength of the human spirit is ultimately uplifting.
Book 2 in the middle-grade Book of Storms trilogy.
Twelve-year-old Danny O’Neill’s life is miserable. His horrific nightmares have left him skittish, fearful, and without friends. That is, until he meets the tough, unswerving Cath Carrera, a girl who has known no kindness and expects none. Running away from her abusive father, Cath encounters a hare named Barshin who tells her that she is a tela: a being who can talk to other creatures. Barshin then briefly takes her to Chromos, a world created by dreams and imagination. Once home in England, Cath is desperate to return to Chromos, the only world of beauty that she has known, but Barshin tells her that he will only lead her back again if she gets the message to Danny—a schoolmate—that Danny’s cousin Tom is in great danger of being swallowed up by Sammael, the dark entity in Book 1 who trades wishes for souls. Cath delivers the message, but Danny wants none of it, scarred as he is by his last encounter with Sammael. Pitting Danny’s fear against Cath’s fearlessness, Hatfield once again spins a complex, action-filled story that is buoyed with mythology and keenly observed depictions of the natural world. Danny is a middle-class white boy; Cath is a lower-class girl who endures taunts that her mother is a “Gypsy.”
While the subject matter is dark and at times raw, the message of the strength of the human spirit is ultimately uplifting. (Fantasy. 11-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-001-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
