GENERAL JACK AND THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE KINGDOMS

by David Bush ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Animals, guided by a mysterious boy, seek to defeat their brutal feline overlords in this multilayered fantasy intended for middle school readers.

In the Five Kingdoms, all animals live on a single landmass bordered by ice and a desert wasteland. It’s a dark time for those at the mercy of the brutal Felines (lions and tigers) and King Roar, the most brutal of all. In an adventure with overtones of Orwell’s Animal Farm and C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series (two influences the author cites in his copious aftermatter), the Felines’ rule is challenged by the near-mystical appearance of a 10-year-old human, General Jack. He inspires Miaow, the diffident chief of the small cats and the book’s primary narrator, to find the resolve to unite the disparate, fearful, and suspicious animal species in an attempt to oust the Feline overlords. The author weaves Miaow’s self-doubts through thickets of detail about this animal-centric world, its inhabitants, and the social hierarchy that controls them. The battle plan and its “farcical” execution due to missed signals, panic, and impatience, are exhaustively described and detailed in black-and-white charts. (The book’s effective illustrations, uncredited, are mostly small, black silhouettes of objects, settings, and characters.) What happens after the battle encompasses Jack’s eventual departure for a land unknown, the profound changes that occur in the animals’ world, and how the truth of what happened is eventually manipulated and obscured by ambitious propagandists. According to the notes that follow, this is the second book of a planned trilogy. General Jack is the older version of the 5-year-old protagonist in Bush’s debut chapter book (The Joyous Adventures of Whizzojack, 2015). (The readership for each book may be intended to reflect Jack’s age, but the complex layers here skew to teens, not preteens.) Although General Jack’s inspirational counsel to Miaow thuds at times with such platitudes as “where there’s a will there’s a way,” and “don’t judge by appearances,” his surprising return and his gentle, Aslan-like treatment of Miaow are genuinely moving, lending intrigue to who Jack will be in the third book of the trilogy.

A dense but absorbing adventure packed with overt literary references and layers of meaning. (author bio)

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 979-8-66-722641-3

Page Count: 189

Publisher: Self

Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2020

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ACTION & ADVENTURE FICTION | CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY