An adventure-filled tale that intrigues despite its flaws
A lonely orphan endures monsters and mayhem in a house on a haunted hill.
After being sold to finance her parents’ journey to the New World, Sophie, a plucky white English girl, finds herself delivered to Catacomb Hill, a mysterious island-mansion that is built atop catacombs and surrounded by a sea teeming with carnivorous monsters. Apprenticed to Scree, the mansion’s caretaker, Sophie’s task is to feed bones to the monsters, lest they rise up to devour the house and its inhabitants instead. She is also forced to serve the shrewish mistress of the manor, nicknamed Battleship, and her odious twin offspring, who reek of formaldehyde and dream of being famous actors. Though she’s been told that there is no way out of bondage, Sophie is determined to escape by any means necessary. Salter’s love of storytelling and fantasy is evident in this debut novel, and in Sophie, Salter creates a truly tenacious and indomitable female protagonist. The novel’s wealth of material, which includes sea monsters, an eerie house seething with secrets, fantastic machines, a mysterious inventor, flying horses, and insufferable aristocrats, is at times overtaken by its sheer abundance. Overambitious worldbuilding keeps the rules that govern the story’s monster-laden England from clear definition, and, as a consequence, key characters feel underdeveloped.
An adventure-filled tale that intrigues despite its flaws .(Fantasy. 10-15)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18634-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Thought-provoking and full of heart; a genuinely pleasurable read.
Before he ages out of seeing Holy Beings, Nathan must find water monster Dew a mentor.
A couple of years after the events of Healer of the Water Monster (2021), Nathan’s life in Phoenix, Arizona, is changing—he and his mother, Janet, are moving in with Janet’s boyfriend and his son, the book’s co-protagonist, Edward. More than that, Nathan’s going through puberty and knows his time with Dew is limited—her new guardian will be Edward. But to ensure that Dew learns the water monster songs, she needs a mentor. Nathan wants it to be powerful water monster Yitoo Bi’aanii, who eagerly returns to the Fourth World. Upon seeing how her river has dwindled, Yitoo declares that an Enemy is stealing the water. The quest to thwart the Enemy is quickly complicated as the stakes rise and the heroes face conflicting loyalties. The environmentalist narrative embraces nuance and complications, avoiding easy answers without undermining the possibility of a hopeful future. Edward, newly informed of his Diné family’s brutal relocation era story, also struggles with inherited trauma, while Yitoo, who was witness to the violence, carries the atrocities with her. Additionally, Edward grapples with the fact that his late mother was White and with being the only household member who is not fully Diné. The bittersweet ending is as beautiful as the prose describing the fantastical journey to get there.
Thought-provoking and full of heart; a genuinely pleasurable read. (author’s note, glossary, note from Cynthia Leitich Smith) (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780062990433
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Heartdrum
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist.
With Rumpelstiltskin and his band of villains still on the loose, the students and staff of Fairy Tale Reform School are on high alert as they prepare for the next attack.
Classes are devoted to teaching battle techniques and conjuring new weapons, which narrator Gilly finds preferable to learning history or manners. But Maxine, her ogress friend, has had it with all the doom and gloom. The last straw is when the agenda at the Royal Lady-in-Waiting meeting is changed from “How to Plan the Perfect Fairy Garden Party” to designing flying rocks and creating flower darts. While on a class field trip to the village to investigate their future careers, Maxine finds a magic lamp housing a genie named Darlene. Her wish that everyone be happy works a little too well. War preparations are put on hold as the school fills with flowers, laughter, and plans for a musical production. But when Gilly is tapped to fill in for the local chief of the dwarf police, things really take a turn for the worse. The students, including fairies, ogres, and the part-human/part-beast offspring of Beauty and the ex-Beast, focus on friendship and supporting one another in spite of their differences. Humility, forgiveness, and loyalty are also highly regarded in the FTRS community. Human Gilly is white, but there is racial as well as species diversity at FTRS.
An entertaining continuation to a magical series that celebrates diversity with a magical twist. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-5167-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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