In what the author dubs a “polyquel” that partially bridges her Black Book of Secrets (2007) and its prequel Bone Magician (2008), Higgins sends a suddenly penniless young orphan from the filthy streets of Urbs Umida’s South Side to an extravagantly rococo estate house in search of vengeance for his family’s ruin. Thanks to hobbies shared with his recently deceased father, Hector is an accomplished riddler and an expert lepidopterist. Both serve him well as he pursues a certain one-eyed con man while making shift to survive on the Dickensian city’s gin-soaked mean streets and then to raise a crop of butterflies for a lavish dinner party presided over by Withypitts Hall’s decidedly weird Lady Mandible. Readers with a taste for lurid prose, macabre twists, riddles, exotic poisons, high-society caricatures, murderous schemes and scenes of stomach-churning degeneracy will find some or all of these in every chapter, and though the author trots in multiple characters and references from previous episodes, this one stands sturdily on its own. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-56681-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2009
Affectionate “mecha,” gruesome battles, deathbed confessions and stolen children make all the right ingredients for a result...
A steampunk heroine saves the world in a debut adventure.
Fourteen-year-old Catherine Hunter is a child of one of the most powerful men in the Anglyan government, but that doesn’t mean she’s had a happy childhood. Her cartoonishly evil father presides over a reign of terror in war-torn Anglya, and he has been violently abusive against Catherine all her life. Rather than be forced into a loveless marriage, Catherine disguises herself as a boy and stows away on a skyship. Its jovial, do-gooder crew turns out to be smugglers for justice. They all, from dishy ginger orphan Fox to motherly, stew-ladling cook Alice, happily integrate Catherine—going now by “Cat”—into their ranks. As Catherine learns that everything she’s ever known about her country is a lie, she’s thrust into the usual high-stakes fight to save the world. This struggle is paced just right for her to have lovers’ quarrels while sneaking around the most dangerous building in the country. The pieces are all here for a plucky-girl adventure, but the details—secondary characters right out of central casting, cheesy dialogue, a rushed and badly dissonant conclusion—hang ill-fitting on the age-of-steam framework.
Affectionate “mecha,” gruesome battles, deathbed confessions and stolen children make all the right ingredients for a result not quite baked; send it back to Alice in the galley . (Steampunk. 11-13)Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61963-367-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Tailor-made for readers who prefer their coming-of-age fantasies thick, straightforward of plot, and unencumbered by...
A preteen with a hidden heritage runs from slavering Ghorhund and into the arms of his destiny when a huge bell that few can hear summons him to a parallel world.
Urged on by mysterious allies and hotly pursued by a giant black dog, Sylas is transported from a modern slum to another realm where the land looks the same but the people have a different history and practice four different kinds of magic. There, he falls in with the nearly exterminated adherents of the Fourth Way, which cooperates with nature rather than forcibly altering it like the other three, and becomes the object of a massive hunt by legions of bestial creatures made by Thoth, last and foulest of the ruling Priests of Souls. Why? Because according to an oblique prophecy, if Sylas can find his Glimmer, his other-world counterpart, he may reunite the two sundered planes. Along with folding in missing parents, coded writings, giant eagles and other comfortably familiar elements, Johnstone rarely breaks from a single storyline in this opener for (inevitably) a planned trilogy. Moreover, with the exception of one character playing a double game, he neatly divides the large supporting cast between warm, loyal, charismatic good guys and malformed, malign baddies. Stay tuned.
Tailor-made for readers who prefer their coming-of-age fantasies thick, straightforward of plot, and unencumbered by complications or moral conundrums. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-00-749122-3
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Harper360
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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