A full-throttle fanfare for those with a predilection for alchemy, adventure, and a little anarchy.
Well-behaved girls seldom make history…or save ill-fated airships from menacing saboteurs.
Stella Glass won’t stand for being left at home while her healer parents embark on an exploratory voyage via airship to the uncharted lands. So, like any forward-thinking, industrious, stubborn trailblazer, she stows herself away in the ship’s hull. It isn’t long before she realizes she’s not the only one camping among the cargo. Cyrus, with whom she immediately butts heads, claims he is there to ensure the ship’s safe travel, but Stella isn’t convinced. It isn’t until a faceless (in actuality, face-changing) man nearly kills them both—and crashes the ship—that Stella realizes just how much Cyrus and his mysterious powers of protection are needed (and how much she digs him). While The Secrets of Solace (2016) was a respite from the hearty steampunk aesthetic of The Mark of the Dragonfly (2014), the metallic, gear-shifting flavor returns in this third book set in Solace. Without much delving into cultural identifiers, Stella and Cyrus occupy the white default in this fantasy world of quasi-humans, face-shifters, telepathic species, and a winged reptilian race. With a pace that doesn’t let up, the combustible action is interwoven with the need to decipher what is exploration and what is invasion: does anyone ever really come in peace? Hopefully.
A full-throttle fanfare for those with a predilection for alchemy, adventure, and a little anarchy. (map, glossary) (Steampunk. 11-15)Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-93312-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Neither the premise nor some decently limned dragons give wings to this pedestrian clunker.
Magic and technology square off as fire-breathing dragons on a parallel Earth face extinction from heavily armed military drones designed on this one.
Sure that he’s on the track of his long-missing father, techno-whiz Marcus falls through a portal into the land of Errenia just as mysterious drones armed with missiles and machine guns appear to “decimate” (a word the author is fond of misusing) the city of Dracone’s poorer sections and take the ongoing genocide of the mountain-dwelling dragons to a new level. In this series opener, Marcus joins forces with Driele, a tough young female dragon-riding blacksmith/inventor. They first craft a drone to fight on the side of the dragons, then fly through multiple aerial dogfights to rescue Marcus’ dad, cope with well-telegraphed revelations about Marcus’ ancestry, and face a bad guy who, typically, explains at length how he’s using stolen our-Earth technology to achieve his evil schemes. Though King tucks in occasional boy-girl and human-dragon banter to lighten the load, the novel sinks beneath the weight of labored explication (“Marcus was a different person when he had a mission: he was focused and passionate and optimistic”) and maladroit writing (“The explosion was incredible”; “smells…wafted over her nose”; “…the school was now a flaming heap of metal and concrete”).
Neither the premise nor some decently limned dragons give wings to this pedestrian clunker. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: March 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59514-797-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Muddled but fun, with a notably subversive premise.
With help from seven loyal but decidedly iffy companions, 11-year-old Nelson sets out to rescue his kidnapped older sister.
Said companions are no less than embodiments of the seven deadly sins, extracted from Nelson’s soul by an old device discovered in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Jennings casts them as invisible (except to Nelson) monsters with names like Nosh (gluttony), Miser (greed), and, um, Stan (wrath). The news that Nelson’s beloved half sister, Celeste, is presumed dead after disappearing in an explosion leaves him overwhelmed with grief. But the sins stoutly insist that she’s still alive, and so off he goes—passing, with their boisterous assistance, through Heathrow’s security and onto a jet bound for Brazil. The hilariously hectic journey ends in a climactic battle with fish monsters evolved in a poisoned wellspring of the primordial water of life, where Celeste is being held. Rather than pull all of these allegorical elements together, though, the author just dumps them in an untidy heap, portraying the sins (except in one brief scene) as comical sidekicks who are there to provide essential help. He chucks in frequent silly line drawings that depict the sins as Monsters, Inc.–style creatures and Nelson as white. References to toxic farts, poo, slime, dead rats, and like disgustibles are par for the course.
Muddled but fun, with a notably subversive premise. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-05275-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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