A diverting, heartfelt adventure that provides laughs in between earnest moments and spells.
In this fantasy, a mage tries to save the same world he’d tormented as an evil wizard—part of his university studies—with help from the heroes who’d fought him.
With his reign as Dark Lord in subworld Trelari finally over, innerworlder Avery Stewart heads back to Mysterium University. The mage’s dissertation focuses on stabilizing an unbalanced subworld, maybe indefinitely to prevent its eventual destruction. Avery’s role as the bad guy was to create an imbalance, with his spell consequently guiding a select group of people who opposed him to “defuse the imbalance.” It was a grueling three months Mysterium-time, but Avery finishes 17 days early and plans to enjoy a relaxing night—neither logging his return nor checking in Trelari’s reality key at the storeroom. The evening begins well when he meets fellow student Vivian, who seems quite taken by his experiment. The next morning, however, Vivian’s gone, as is the key. With assistance from elfin roommate Eldrin Leightner, Avery once again enters Trelari, where Vivian’s become the Dark Queen. Slowly reassembling the Heroes of the Ages (who don’t recognize him without his Dark Lord makeup), Avery hopes his spell will lead them to vanquish Dark Queen Vivian. But if the shifting Trelari becomes a threat to Mysterium, the latter may feel it necessary to destroy the subworld. Heckel’s (The Pitchfork of Destiny, 2016, etc.) offbeat novel, like his previous work, is told with tongue firmly in cheek. Some of the humor is parody (Avery, et al., form the Tolkienian “Company of the Fellowship”), while parts are gleefully silly, like a town’s distinct but similarly named inns: Red Dragon, Dead Dragon, etc. Nonetheless, there’s unmistakable sincerity, especially once Avery starts seeing the Heroes as real people, rather than mere pawns to confirm his spell’s validity. The story likewise excels as fantasy, featuring battles with trolls and orcs and a smashing final act that revels in chaos. Heckel aptly subverts overexplanation of complicated notions (i.e., Mysterium and Trelari’s divergent passages of time) with narrator Avery’s inability to understand most of it himself. His response to someone telling him his magic makes no sense is: “Exactly.”
A diverting, heartfelt adventure that provides laughs in between earnest moments and spells.Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-235934-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Harper Voyager Impulse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.
Self-assured, entertaining debut novel that blends genres and crosses continents in quest of magic.
The world’s not big enough for two wizards, as Tolkien taught us—even if that world is the shiny, modern one of the late 19th century, with its streetcars and electric lights and newfangled horseless carriages. Yet, as first-time novelist Morgenstern imagines it, two wizards there are, if likely possessed of more legerdemain than true conjuring powers, and these two are jealous of their turf. It stands to reason, the laws of the universe working thus, that their children would meet and, rather than continue the feud into a new generation, would instead fall in love. Call it Romeo and Juliet for the Gilded Age, save that Morgenstern has her eye on a different Shakespearean text, The Tempest; says a fellow called Prospero to young magician Celia of the name her mother gave her, “She should have named you Miranda...I suppose she was not clever enough to think of it.” Celia is clever, however, a born magician, and eventually a big hit at the Circus of Dreams, which operates, naturally, only at night and has a slightly sinister air about it. But what would you expect of a yarn one of whose chief setting-things-into-action characters is known as “the man in the grey suit”? Morgenstern treads into Harry Potter territory, but though the chief audience for both Rowling and this tale will probably comprise of teenage girls, there are only superficial genre similarities. True, Celia’s magical powers grow, and the ordinary presto-change-o stuff gains potency—and, happily, surrealistic value. Finally, though, all the magic has deadly consequence, and it is then that the tale begins to take on the contours of a dark thriller, all told in a confident voice that is often quite poetic, as when the man in the grey suit tells us, “There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict.”
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-53463-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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