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
Touching, riotously funny, and absolutely stunning.
In the third instalment of the Pandava Quartet, 14-year-old Arundhati “Aru” Shah and her companions need to defeat their archnemesis (and Aru’s father), the Sleeper, and prevent the impending war between the devas and asuras.
The novel opens with Aru and her friends on a mission to rescue two people from the Sleeper’s soldiers. The two people are 10-year-old identical twins and Pandavas Nikita and Sheela, trapped atop a Ferris wheel in downtown Atlanta. This mission is of utmost importance because Sheela is a clairvoyant with an important prophecy, which speaks of the rise of the Sleeper and an untrue Pandava sister—and which the Sleeper must not hear at any cost. Despite their best efforts, however, one of the Sleeper’s soldiers overhears the prophecy, and Aru, Mini, Brynne, and Adin—accompanied by Rudy, a serpent prince—set off to find the missing Kalpavriksha, a wish-granting tree, so that they might wish upon it to set things right. Much like its predecessors, this fast-moving adventure draws on Hindu cosmology and South Asian pop-culture references to create an enchanting but believable magical Otherworld, where gods, demigods, demons, and talking animals abound. Chokshi’s novel is pitch perfect: The plot is action-packed, the dialogue witty, and the characters (almost all of whom are either Indian or part-Indian) are compelling, diverse, and complex.
Touching, riotously funny, and absolutely stunning. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-368-01385-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Rick Riordan Presents/Disney
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A slowly unfolding read for bug lovers and environmentalists.
Can Eden find a way to stop insect-hating August from killing all the bugs?
In this debut by the writer and director of Black-ish and other hit TV shows, 9-year-old August, a White boy who is the victim of bullying, hates insects: A cockroach climbs up his arm during a school play, a fly lands in his mouth and he vomits on his favorite teacher, and a spiderweb causes him to drop a box of his mother’s homemade jelly. August schemes to get his hands on a pesticide that is rumored to be exceptionally toxic—only its inventor is missing. On her 10th birthday, Eden, who has a White Jewish mother and Black father and comes from a musical family, learns she can talk to wasps using her kazoo. She saves a paper wasps’ nest from a group of destructive children, and, taken by her kindness, the wasp queen informs her of a mysterious school dedicated to teaching communication between insects and humans. Eden finds a card in a library book for the Institute for Lower Learning: Could it be the right school? Eden’s and August’s quests intersect at the institute. Though the prose is beautiful, the novel creeps along, with extensive passages of narration that are not broken up with dialogue. Despite the protagonists’ young ages, older middle-grade readers may be drawn to the strong messages about environmentalism, friendship, and self-discovery.
A slowly unfolding read for bug lovers and environmentalists. (Morse code and semaphore charts) (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-40785-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
© 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.
