A terrific read for fantasy fans.
A young princess in exile rediscovers a forgotten magic in a charming, surprisingly nuanced middle-grade fantasy.
Thirteen-year-old Noa Marchena, along with her elder brother, Julian, and her little sister, Mite, barely escaped from the overthrow of their family’s rule of the Florean Archipelago. Now they plan to retake Julian’s throne from their mobile island base, filled with invisible cats and guarded by a cake-loving sea serpent. Fortunately, Julian is the most gifted mage alive; unfortunately, that very power leaves him vulnerable to becoming an evil Dark Lord—but not if Noa has anything to say about it. Fawcett transforms a fairly conventional premise into a sheer delight with her witty prose and sharply drawn characters. The loving bonds between the bickering Marchena siblings—melodramatic, morally ambiguous Julian; explosive oddball Mite; and brilliant, practical, bossy Noa—are the driving force of the narrative. Minor characters are almost as memorable, and even the villains have complicated, sympathetic motives. The islands make for an interesting setting, with a population representing a range of skin tones (the Marchenas are olive-skinned), gender equality, and a society accepting of different sexualities. The language-based magic system is carefully thought-out, but the Marchenas’ successes rely as much on diplomacy, clever strategy, and meticulous planning. While this volume comes to a satisfying (if not unrealistically triumphant) conclusion, there is (happily) plenty of room left for potential sequels.
A terrific read for fantasy fans. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-285454-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes.
Eleven-year-old Georgie sets out to the rescue after seeing his dad snatched into thin air by a hideous figure.
In a confusing debut that reads like a first draft, the kidnapping impels the young slingshot expert to go from doggedly enduring vicious bullying at school to intrepidly plunging after his father through a portal to Scatterplot, an otherworldly realm where the memories of everyone in New York are uploaded by omnilingual Scribes. Classmates Apurva Aluwhalia (who’s cued South Asian) and Roscoe Harris (who reads Black and is confined to a role that’s largely limited to comic relief), each motivated by their own concerns, follow white-presenting Georgie on his adventure. In Scatterplot, they must remain alert for the “tribe” of “bad people” called Altercockers, formed by the exiled Rollie D. Meanwhile, Flint Eldritch, the menacing figure who was responsible for Georgie’s father’s disappearance, is bent on using the Aetherquill, a magical pen that can rewrite reality in unpredictable ways, to replace all those recorded memories with fake ones. In a story that’s marred by stilted dialogue, flat characterization, and awkward turns of phrase, Georgie and his friends, along with Scatterplot siblings Edie and Ore, embark on a quest to save both his father and the entire realm. The puss-oozing, misshapen villain Flint, crawling with bugs, does at least provide a memorably lurid element of horror. The novel ends with an abrupt cliffhanger.
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798886453164
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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