Plot and characters are fine (though stock), but they can’t overcome the credulity-straining setup.
Mediocre fantasy fare buckles under a preposterous physical setting.
Cymbril lives aboard the Thunder Rake, a “wheeled city” on a wagon, with “stables, houses, towers, gardens—even a rippling canal” big enough for two bridges. On “wheels seven times as tall as a man,” the Rake is propelled across land by a rowing system of levers, gears and “tremendous claws, gouging the ground, drawing the vessel forward.” Because the claws destroy the ground, the Rake must “follow the wildest country where no one built or planted,” yet it reaches “cities and towns” regularly to sell merchandise. Another logic flaw big enough to drive a wagon city through is the Rake’s ability, despite being of city-width, to abruptly steer left or right to avoid an obstacle just ahead. Cymbril, a glamorous slave (“[p]eople tended to stare at her startling blue eyes, her olive-golden skin, and, most of all, her shining hair”), sings while Rake merchants sell wares; at night she creeps around the Rake finding magical objects and, once, an entire dark market. As a classic mischievous orphan of unknown parentage, she naturally befriends enslaved Fey boy Loric, and they attempt escape. Overt anti-slavery themes sit uneasily alongside portrayals of the Urrmsh, explicitly free creatures whose description metaphorically echoes happy plantation slaves and wise natives.
Plot and characters are fine (though stock), but they can’t overcome the credulity-straining setup. (sheet music with lyrics) (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-37025-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship.
A young tennis champion becomes the target of revenge.
In this sequel to Legacy and the Queen (2019), Legacy Petrin and her friends Javi and Pippa have returned to Legacy’s home province and the orphanage run by her father. With her friends’ help, she is in training to defend her championship when they discover that another player, operating under the protection of High Consul Silla, is presenting herself as Legacy. She is so convincing that the real Legacy is accused of being an imitation. False Legacy has become a hero to the masses, further strengthening Silla’s hold, and it becomes imperative to uncover and defeat her. If Legacy is to win again, she must play her imposter while disguised as someone else. Winning at tennis is not just about money and fame, but resisting Silla’s plans to send more young people into brutal mines with little hope of better lives. Legacy will have to overcome her fears and find the magic that allowed her to claim victory in the past. This story, with its elements of sports, fantasy, and social consciousness that highlight tensions between the powerful and those they prey upon, successfully continues the series conceived by late basketball superstar Bryant. As before, the tennis matches are depicted with pace and spirit. Legacy and Javi have brown skin; most other characters default to White.
A worthy combination of athletic action, the virtues of inner strength, and the importance of friendship. (Fantasy. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949520-19-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Granity Studios
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Thrills galore for gamers willing to go along for the ride.
A new virtual-reality theme park goes haywire on a crowd of young victims, er, visitors in Alexander’s latest screamfest.
Having scored one of just 100 coveted preview tickets to a cutting-edge, kids-only venue dubbed ESCAPE, budding amusement park fan and designer Cody Baxter is looking forward to a life-changing experience. What he gets is more of a life-threatening one, as games and rides with names like Triassic Terror and Haunted Hillside not only pit him against a monster and then zombies—or sometimes a monster and zombies—as well as ruthless competing players, but seem tailored to play on individual personal terrors. And, in some never explained way, the VR quickly turns into real battles that inflict real wounds even as the real settings shift with sudden, dizzying unpredictability. Teaming up with loyal new friends Jayson Torn and Inga Andersdottir, the former described as being Japanese and White and the latter as Norwegian, Cody (who seems to default to White) struggles for survival, learning ultimately that ESCAPE was created by an evil genius with an ulterior motive who is convinced that he can teach children a salutary lesson. The plot’s no more logical in its twists and contrivances than the premise, but the author’s knack for spinning out nightmarish situations is definitely on display here as the tale careens toward a properly lurid outcome.
Thrills galore for gamers willing to go along for the ride. (Light horror. 9-12)Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-26047-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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