A fine tale with well-conceived quests, strong characters, exciting confrontations, and a delightful resolution.
Three children continue their mission to ensure the world’s survival in this fantasy sequel.
In the first installment of this series, the white Temple kids—older sister Julie and her brother, Leo—along with their African American neighbor Annabel—sailed in a magical, invisible flying boat on a quest to free water sprites from their monstrous captors. This was the first step in reuniting humans with elementals (such as dwarfs and fairies), ushering in the new age of light. But a great battle is still to be fought, with the children playing an essential role. As Brathnar, King of the Dwarfs, explains, many forces “desire the destruction of the inner light and our shared world….Earth’s fate depends on you.” The kids make a long and perilous journey to bring the Water of Light from deep underground and distribute it (in the form of magical seeds) as healing medicine for Mother Earth’s droughts and wildfires. The threesome also discover what’s happened to Annabel’s missing older brother, Massud, and retrieve an essential artifact that helps them and the elemental powers battle Zuratrat, the fearsome Molten Dragon. Succeeding could heal the world, gain a treasure, and make many wishes come true. The author continues the fun, thrills, and lively characters from the series opener (The Invisible Boat, 2014) in this follow-up for fourth graders and up. Readers learn more about the neighbors in the Temples’ brownstone who contribute to the quest; Mr. Hoover, for example, is a private detective, and he helps the three children nail down clues related to Massud. Müller’s (Rounding the Cape of Good Hope, 2017, etc.) ending nicely brings all the good guys together for a conclusion that’s logical and satisfying. The author’s descriptions, especially of settings, are a joy, with well-chosen details to linger over, whether the location is a fantasy landscape, a magic shop, or a detective’s office. As before, the book has an urgently serious message of ethical responsibility to the environment, but it doesn’t feel preachy thanks to the story’s highly colored adventures.
A fine tale with well-conceived quests, strong characters, exciting confrontations, and a delightful resolution.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943582-98-3
Page Count: 396
Publisher: Waldorf Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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