Baldacci piles on the monsters as he sends Vega Jane and her hunky, clever sidekick Delph through the magical Quag in this follow-up to The Finisher (2014).
Escaping the walled town of Wormwood in hopes of finding the “truth” that lies beyond, the two teens befriend or, more often, flee or slaughter a laundry list of creatures: garms, amarocs, lycans, venomous jabbits, snake-haired alectos, green-blooded Soul Takers, dreads, grubbs, hyperbores, and numerous other residents of the broad, weirdly mutable wilderness. For variety, they are also twice captured—once by a mad subterranean king and then by the Quag’s 800-year-old Keeper—and Vega has to die to get across a certain river guarded by a skeletal boatman. These all turn out to be only temporary setbacks, however. In blatant bids to add appeal, Baldacci supplements the teeming cast of ravening boojums with a new companion who may be an ally, a rival for Delph, or both, plus familiar elements like a ring that makes its wearer invisible and Harry Potter–esque spells, a talking book that delivers only infuriatingly vague advice, and frequent Briticisms (“Wotcha, Vega Jane”). The flights and fights are all set pieces without much sense of suspense or danger, and there are so many of them that even bloodthirsty readers might echo Vega Jane’s own exhausted “Let’s just finish this.”
Not a stand-alone episode, but definitely a pleaser for creature-feature fans. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-83194-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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The rebellion against an evil archmage and his bowler-topped minions wends its way to a climax.
Dispatching five baddies on the first two pages alone, wand-waving villain-exterminator Vega Jane gathers a motley army of fellow magicals, ghosts, and muggles—sorry, “Wugmorts”—for a final assault on Necro and his natty Maladons. As Necro repeatedly proves to be both smarter and more powerful than Vega Jane, things generally go badly for the rebels, who end up losing their hidden refuge, many of their best fighters, and even the final battle. Baldacci is plainly up on his ancient Greek theatrical conventions, however; just as all hope is lost, a divinity literally descends from the ceiling to referee a winner-take-all duel, and thanks to an earlier ritual that (she and readers learn) gives her a do-over if she’s killed (a second deus ex machina!), Vega Jane comes away with a win…not to mention an engagement ring to go with the magic one that makes her invisible and a new dog, just like the one that died heroically. Measuring up to the plot’s low bar, the narrative too reads like low-grade fanfic, being laden with references to past events, characters who only supposedly died, and such lines as “a spurt of blood shot out from my forehead,” “they started falling at a rapid number,” and “[h]is statement struck me on a number of levels.”
Awful on a number of levels—but tidily over at last. (glossary) (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-26393-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2019
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Scott tops off his deservedly popular series with a heaping shovelful of monster attacks, heroic last stands, earthquakes and other geological events, magic-working, millennia-long schemes coming to fruition, hearts laid bare, family revelations, transformations, redemptions and happy endings (for those deserving them).
Multiple plotlines—some of which, thanks to time travel, feature the same characters and even figures killed off in previous episodes—come to simultaneous heads in a whirl of short chapters. Flamel and allies (including Prometheus and Billy the Kid) defend modern San Francisco from a motley host of mythological baddies. Meanwhile, in ancient Danu Talis (aka Atlantis), Josh and Sophie are being swept into a play to bring certain Elders to power as the city’s downtrodden “humani” population rises up behind Virginia Dare, the repentant John Dee and other Immortals and Elders. The cast never seems unwieldy despite its size, the pacing never lets up, and the individual set pieces are fine mixtures of sudden action, heroic badinage and cliffhanger cutoffs. As a whole, though, the tale collapses under its own weight as the San Francisco subplots turn out to be no more than an irrelevant sideshow, and climactic conflicts take place on an island that is somehow both a historical, physical place and a higher reality from which Earth and other “shadowrealms” are spun off.
Much rousing sturm und drang, though what’s left after the dust settles is a heap of glittering but disparate good parts rather than a cohesive whole. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-73535-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
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