A good mix of strong action scenes, intriguing lore and personal development helps elevate this YA fantasy above its...
In this YA fantasy adventure, an outcast high-schooler discovers his true destiny as an elf.
Timothy Brennan feels like another species compared with the students at school. Much to his astonishment, he’s right. Six months after his widowed mother died, Timothy is living with his crude, neglectful uncle, having little to hope for except that the jocks won’t notice him and that pretty Melanie Marshall will. All this changes when he meets Aenya, a new girl in school. Even prettier than Melanie, Aenya defends Tim from bullies—and then saves him from a suicide attempt. Tim soon realizes that, unlike his new friend, most teenage girls “don’t live in fantasy cottages in the middle of the forest by themselves.” Aenya explains that she’s a fairy; he’s an elf, and his mother was murdered by an enemy faction. Vowing to avenge her, Timothy and Aenya travel to Aenya’s homeland in Ireland to learn more about his family’s history. Tim learns that, as the seventh son of a seventh son, he has special powers and might be the one to wield the Sword of Connleodh and end the evil elf Cadwaladr’s takeover plans. In his debut novel, Nilsen offers a fast pace, a relatable hero and a well-considered reworking of Celtic myth. Many elements are familiar from similar stories: the outcast hero with abilities, notable parents and a significant role to play in defeating an evil overlord. When Aenya tells Tim, “There is more to you than you realize,” this is what every teenager wants to hear. It’s typical of this genre’s wish-fulfillment aspects that Tim’s abilities are innate, needing only to be tapped rather than developed through long years of study and practice. But Nilsen gives Tim enough flaws (insecurity, possessiveness) to make him interesting, and he undergoes real losses in finding his destiny. Common sense and humor also help leaven the story; when Tim asks how his uncle, also an elf, can be “such an asshole,” Aenya replies, “Trust me, there are assholes in every species.”
A good mix of strong action scenes, intriguing lore and personal development helps elevate this YA fantasy above its well-worn tropes.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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