Fairy-tale retellings grow like briar hedges; there’s no reason to read this one when so many better efforts exist.
A mishmash of fairy-tale influences and images underlies this debut.
Kate Hood has only an old grandmother, and they live together in the woods. When wolves set upon her as she carries groceries home from the village and she finds their cottage empty, she flees to Jack Haricot (exiled after that thing with the giant). Nan left a series of tapestries depicting imprisoned young women—one with a shorn head, another surrounded by poisoned apples, and a third locked in a hot cell with her twin brother. Sadly, these characters are mostly neither named nor seen for more than a few minutes in Kate’s visions. Kate and Jack, meanwhile, are summoned to the king and told to rescue the princess, who has been (nonsensically) kidnapped; they set off, fall in love, and save the day. As in the fairy tales that give this some structure, the world is thinly sketched at best, characters are representations, and action occurs because the plot dictates it. The writing is clumsy, overt and unsubtle, with some full-on malapropisms (“clairvoyant lungs”), and the tone is anachronistic (rented rooms and tin cans side by side with a pastoral, industry-free society) and dated at the same time (Kate refers to schooling Jack in “the cautious listening of women”).
Fairy-tale retellings grow like briar hedges; there’s no reason to read this one when so many better efforts exist. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-64046-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end.
Riggs spins a gothic tale of strangely gifted children and the monsters that pursue them from a set of eerie, old trick photographs.
The brutal murder of his grandfather and a glimpse of a man with a mouth full of tentacles prompts months of nightmares and psychotherapy for 15-year-old Jacob, followed by a visit to a remote Welsh island where, his grandfather had always claimed, there lived children who could fly, lift boulders and display like weird abilities. The stories turn out to be true—but Jacob discovers that he has unwittingly exposed the sheltered “peculiar spirits” (of which he turns out to be one) and their werefalcon protector to a murderous hollowgast and its shape-changing servant wight. The interspersed photographs—gathered at flea markets and from collectors—nearly all seem to have been created in the late 19th or early 20th centuries and generally feature stone-faced figures, mostly children, in inscrutable costumes and situations. They are seen floating in the air, posing with a disreputable-looking Santa, covered in bees, dressed in rags and kneeling on a bomb, among other surreal images. Though Jacob’s overdeveloped back story gives the tale a slow start, the pictures add an eldritch element from the early going, and along with creepy bad guys, the author tucks in suspenseful chases and splashes of gore as he goes. He also whirls a major storm, flying bullets and a time loop into a wild climax that leaves Jacob poised for the sequel.
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end. (Horror/fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59474-476-1
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
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