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THE FEVERBIRD’S CLAW

A gripping prehistoric adventure fantasy channels a timely message about tolerance and social justice. Moralin, a highborn maiden of sophisticated, stratified, silk-trading Delagua, has to abandon her secret warrior training as she enters adolescence and cloistered temple service. But when captured by a barbaric enemy tribe, Moralin must draw on her forbidden skills, and rely on her heritage and her goddess’s guidance. For the outside world is both dangerous and marvelous, and the alien peoples are not as despicable as she had always believed; even the goddess’s voice can be ambiguous. From the riveting first sentence to the exultant final exclamation, Kurtz interweaves meticulous world-building, thrilling exploits, and moments of transcendent wonder. Moralin is an utterly convincing heroine: proud, resilient, and unflinchingly honest. While her smug conviction of Delaguan superiority grates, it makes her dawning social awareness even more poignant. Unfortunately, the tight reliance on such a xenophobic viewpoint leaves the remaining characters (and their cultures) tantalizingly vague. Readers will ache to learn more about her world and her future—just like Moralin herself. (Fiction. 10+)

Pub Date: May 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-06-000820-2

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004

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IMPOSSIBLE CREATURES

From the Impossible Creatures series , Vol. 1

An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters.

Two young people save the world and all the magic in it in this series opener.

When tall, dark-haired, white-skinned Christopher Forrester goes to stay with his grandfather in Scotland, he ventures to the top of a forbidden hill and discovers astonishing magical creatures. His grandfather explains that Christopher’s family are guardians of the “way through” to the Archipelago, where the Glimourie Tree grows—the source of glimourie, or the world’s magic. Black-haired, olive-skinned Mal Arvorian, a girl from the Archipelago, is being pursued by a murderer, and she asks Christopher for help, launching them both on a wild, dangerous journey to discover why the glimourie is disappearing and how to stop it. Together with a part-nereid woman, a ratatoska, a dragon, and a Berserker, they face an odyssey of dangerous tasks to find the Immortal, the only one who can reverse the draining of magic. Like Lyra and Will from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Mal and Christopher sacrifice their innocence for experience, meeting every challenge with depthless courage until they finally reach the maze at the heart of it all. Rundell throws myriad obstacles in her characters’ way, but she gives them tools both tangible (a casapasaran, which always points the way home, and the glamry blade, which cuts through anything) and intangible (the desire “to protect something worth protecting” and an “insistence that the world is worth loving”). Final art not seen.

An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-16)

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024

ISBN: 9780593809860

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024

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CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS AND THE TERRIFYING RETURN OF TIPPY TINKLETROUSERS

From the Captain Underpants series , Vol. 9

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

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