A sequel of sorts to the classic The Adventures of Pinocchio that never quite establishes its reason for being.
Leviant imagines a puppet brought to life in 19th-century Italy in this postmodern fairy tale.
You’ve heard of Pinocchio—but what about Tinocchia? Tinocchia is a puppetta—a girl puppet—carved from magical pine by the Italian Jewish woodworker Yossi, a friend of Pinocchio’s creator, Geppetto. Tinocchia’s name is a pun on the appellation of Geppetto’s famous puppet and the Hebrew word for baby, tinok. Yossi raises his magical puppetta to speak both Hebrew and Italian and to appreciate the wonders of nature. He teaches her to observe Jewish holidays such Purim and Hanukkah, though the menorah candles make the wooden girl rather uncomfortable. One day, while playing outside with her friend Table (who is a table), Tinocchia encounters another puppet like herself. “He was a bit older than me and somewhat taller. He had a perky face and a cute, longish, pointy nose.” When she asks him his name, he tells her he is Nipocchio…and his nose begins to grow. Here, finally, is the puppetta’s famous counterpart: Geppetto’s “son,” Pinocchio, the perfect friend for Tinocchia. Together they go on several adventures, encountering frogs, dogs, and giant fish and attending the Commedia del Arte and the famous Palio di Siena horse race. Along the way, Tinocchia auditions for and performs in the Purim play at her synagogue and has several encounters with Samael, the Angel of Death, who wants to take Tinocchia away to puppet heaven but proves amenable to negotiation. Will Tinocchia ever turn into a real girl, the way Pinocchio (or at least the fictional Pinocchio, from the storybook based on her new friend) does at the end of his journey? Does Tinocchia even want to be a real girl at all?
Leviant presents the book as a manuscript discovered in a library in Siena and translated from Italian. As a result, the story is augmented here and there with footnotes and metafictional devices—including a few that poke fun at author Carlo Collodi and his original The Adventures of Pinocchio novel. Puns abound, some of them wince-inducing (the forest Yossi takes Tinocchia to includes trees with names like the “carpentree,” the “artistree,” and the “poetree”). Though the story is conveyed in simple language, the author finds ways to inject larger ideas, such as this bit of puppet existentialism, voiced by Pinocchio following a viewing of Punch and Judy: “Even though Geppetto says we’re marionettes we’re not marionettes, for they’re manipulated by people and strings and we’re not. And we’re not hand-held puppets either, like Punch and Judy. You and me, Tinocchia, we’re unique. Nobody can tell us what to do.” Even so, it’s difficult to imagine contemporary children finding much delight in this episodic and highly ironic pastiche. Neither is it quite arch enough to captivate an older, literary audience. Occasional illustrations by Chefitz, Deerman, and Spero brighten the text, but they’re poorly formatted. The theme of Judaism is pronounced—the book contains the entirety of the Purim play script—but its placement is somewhat puzzling.
A sequel of sorts to the classic The Adventures of Pinocchio that never quite establishes its reason for being.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2023
ISBN: 9781604893540
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.
In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.
Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884251
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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