For all that the end feels a bit like a flattened Yorkshire pudding, getting there is a thrill a minute.
A bored lad experiences adventures that range from wonderful to horrific in a steampunk-y alternative London.
Feeling underappreciated while home from boarding school, nearly-11-year-old Jack Foster eagerly rejects his upper-middle-class existence in late Victorian London, following the mysterious Mr. Lorcan Havelock through a magical doorway into the parallel world of Londinium. Initially, Jack is enthralled by his freedom and his new environment, a “land of brass and steel and clockwork, of steam and airships….” One of his first acquaintances is Dr. Snailwater, an inventor of mechanical human beings. Jack is disappointed that the doctor wants to return Jack to London, and he’s surprised that Snailwater disapproves of Sir Lorcan. The fast-paced, escalating suspense reaches an unexpectedly dark pinnacle when Lorcan’s disembodied voice convinces Jack that recent public hangings will continue until Jack agrees to assume the role of son to the Lady, ruler of Londinium. And that’s just the beginning. It’s packed with so much action, much of it violent, that readers may well feel that the conclusion is nothing but anticlimactic. The novel’s strength lies in worldbuilding and vivid descriptions, and Anglophiles will likely enjoy the historical-cultural references.
For all that the end feels a bit like a flattened Yorkshire pudding, getting there is a thrill a minute. (Fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-9877-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An appealing combination of animal magic and low-key hero fantasy.
A hungry fox and a girl with a lively personality wield magic together.
Events unfold from the viewpoint of the narrator, a fox named Shadow who lives near the shore of Lake Superior. Food is scarce, she’s thin and has patchy fur, and the loss of her sister some months before is constantly on her mind. Shadow steals shoes from rooms at a nearby motel—she has 257 piled in her den—and distrusts all humans except for one. But Nan, the white-haired woman from the motel who used to feed her, is inexplicably gone; a red-haired girl is there instead. Bee, Nan’s granddaughter, is a bit wild and out of step with others herself. To Shadow’s initial annoyance, she and Bee forge a bond that turns out to be deep and magical; indeed, Bee can understand and give human voice to Shadow’s thoughts. Meanwhile, the island of Whistlenorth, accessed through a portal on Lake Superior, is the site of imminent (and foretold) devastation—and Bee and Shadow must attempt to thwart the danger. The Night Islanders’ greedy and indiscriminate reaping of the environment to distill “ultra-concentrated magic” has laid waste to much of what grows in the magical islands and threatens Minnesota’s forests. As Shadow navigates the dangerous territories of trust and power, the fox has a compelling voice that’s prickly, proud, and subtly funny. The book convincingly depicts a singular brand of northern, woodsy, wild magic.
An appealing combination of animal magic and low-key hero fantasy. (Fantasy. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781536228960
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Walker US/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
A-mew-sing fare for readers who sometimes feel like fraidycats themselves.
Two shelter cats take on a mysterious puss with weird powers who is terrorizing the feline community.
Hardly have timorous (and aptly named) Poop and her sophisticated buddy, Pasha, been brought home by their new “human beans” for a two-week trial than they are accosted by fiery-eyed Scaredy Cat, utterly trashing the kitchen with a click of his claws and, hissing that he’s in charge of the neighborhood, threatening that if they don’t act like proper cats—disdaining ordinary cat food and any summons (they are not dogs, after all), clawing the furniture instead of the scratching post, and showing like “cattitude”—it’ll be back to the shelter for them. Will Poop and Pasha prove to be fraidycats or flee to the cowed clowder of homeless cats hiding from the bully in the nearby woods? Nope, they are made of sterner stuff and resolutely set out to enlist feline allies in a “quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of purrs!” Cast into a gazillion very short chapters related by furry narrators Poop and Pasha, who are helpfully depicted in portrait vignettes by Herzog at each chapter’s head, the ensuing adventures test the defiant kitties’ courage (and, in some cases, attention spans) on the way to a spooky but poignant climax set, appropriately enough as it happens, in a pet graveyard.
A-mew-sing fare for readers who sometimes feel like fraidycats themselves. (Adventure. 9-11)Pub Date: March 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-49443-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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