An exciting action-hero adventure centered on a compelling and competent narrator.
Two girls battle supernatural forces to save their friend.
Thirteen-year-old Sam is horrified to see her best friend Lorenzo’s face in the flames of a campfire. Lorenzo, who’s been turned into the Human Torch, was last seen months ago, on a mysterious field trip during which an entire seventh grade class disappeared. Sam, who was home sick that fateful day, enlists the help of Meg—the one student who survived the outing. The small-town Alberta girls bond: Sam has lost her mother and lives with her unemployed father, while Meg’s alcoholic mother is largely absent. Together, their survival skills are second to none, which is fortunate, since they must foil Lorenzo’s captors without much help from adults. Sam’s narrative voice reads savvy beyond her years, sarcastically barbed in her defiance against morally corrupt—or simply short-sighted—grown-ups. The edgy humor aligns authentically with the middle school protagonist, although several references to the strict German vice principal’s being a “Nazi” feel uncomfortably stereotypical. The witty chapter titles—“I Wear Ugly Sunglasses During a Car Chase,” “I Find Out I Was Right the First Time”—combine with multiple action sequences to highlight Sam as a quick-thinking problem solver. The friendships in the story are satisfyingly ride or die, and the villains are reprehensibly villainous, sometimes filling the role of the bumbling adult. Characters are largely cued white; the language used to describe supporting characters of color unfortunately sounds othering.
An exciting action-hero adventure centered on a compelling and competent narrator. (Science fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9781998273423
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Shadowpaw Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and...
Good has won every fairy-tale contest with Evil for centuries, but a dark sorcerer’s scheme to turn the tables comes to fruition in this ponderous closer.
Broadening conflict swirls around frenemies Agatha and Sophie as the latter joins rejuvenated School Master Rafal, who has dispatched an army of villains from Capt. Hook to various evil stepmothers to take stabs (literally) at changing the ends of their stories. Meanwhile, amid a general slaughter of dwarves and billy goats, Agatha and her rigid but educable true love, Tedros, flee for protection to the League of Thirteen. This turns out to be a company of geriatric versions of characters, from Hansel and Gretel (in wheelchairs) to fat and shrewish Cinderella, led by an enigmatic Merlin. As the tale moves slowly toward climactic battles and choices, Chainani further lightens the load by stuffing it with memes ranging from a magic ring that must be destroyed and a “maleficent” gown for Sophie to this oddly familiar line: “Of all the tales in all the kingdoms in all the Woods, you had to walk into mine.” Rafal’s plan turns out to be an attempt to prove that love can be twisted into an instrument of Evil. Though the proposition eventually founders on the twin rocks of true friendship and family ties, talk of “balance” in the aftermath at least promises to give Evil a fighting chance in future fairy tales. Bruno’s polished vignettes at each chapter’s head and elsewhere add sophisticated visual notes.
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and flashes of hilarity. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-210495-3
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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