A witty, well-conceived, entertaining fantasy featuring a memorable young heroine and genuine chills.
A girl and her friends band together to save their magical world from destruction in this fantasy for middle schoolers.
In the realm of Faraway, Magnolia is a 12-year-old girl with a prodigious gift for magic and a penchant for hoop skirts and crinolines. She is dismayed when her magician parents decide to send her to Gryndells, a boarding school in the great city of Ilium, to hone her powers. She hates leaving her parents’ steam-powered showboat, which transports magicians up and down the Mississippi, and her social circle of sprites, centaurs, talking trees, and catfish the size of city buses. After her arrival at Gryndells, five students disappear, and Magnolia discovers—with the help of one of the school’s ghosts—that something is very wrong in Faraway. Joined by three fellow students and Joe, her anxious parrot familiar, the determined Magnolia sets out to find the missing kids. Plotted with unforced humor and a dash of horror, Jenkinson’s richly textured fantasy involves astral projection, transport portals, evil Imps, giant ogres, a mystical forest with a mind of its own, and stolen dragon teeth with the potential to destroy the entire world of Faraway. There are a few misused words, such as “simpered” for whimpered and “shuttered” for shuddered, but the book’s pleasures, in addition to the well-realized characters, are many. They include references to fairy tales and fantasy literature woven throughout the narrative. In addition to Harry Potter tributes (confusing staircases, sentient books, eccentric professors), there are a mini–Mad Hatter, size-altering potions, quarreling twins (faces on a spinning coin), mentions of hobbits, a powerful magic ring, ceramic Oz figurines, guards in emerald green uniforms, and a witch’s feline familiar named Paiwacket, inspired by Pyewacket in the play/film Bell, Book and Candle. But at its heart, this first installment of a series is a buddy story (and the pals include Joe and Paiwacket), as Magnolia and her companions bond, working together to try to prevent the Imps’ horrific plans for Faraway.
A witty, well-conceived, entertaining fantasy featuring a memorable young heroine and genuine chills. (brief bio)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-980621-17-1
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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