Full STEAM ahead on a series debut equally charged with personal issues and science in (dramatic) action.
The Genius Academy turns out to be about more than dull classwork, as a lonely young inventor discovers.
Unable, despite her mother’s earnest pleas, to stop concocting devices like the death ray that blows a hole through the floor, Nikola reluctantly agrees to be shipped off to a (supposed) boarding school for geniuses. Hardly has she arrived, though, than the death ray is stolen and Nikki discovers that she and her six classmates are actually a team of secret agents employed to save the world on a regular basis. Fortunately, the young folk are an unusually talented bunch. Unfortunately, Nikki has a lot to learn about teamwork, trust, and friendship before the trail of clues dropped by the thief leads to a tense and twisty climax. Cleverly modeling her preteen cast on a gallery of historical geniuses, Keating has done her homework: Nikki reflects her near namesake not only in her work on electrical inventions, but also in other respects from eidetic memory to deep-seated distrust of others. Likewise, her associates include sharply observant Mary Shelley, musical and math prodigy Adam “Mo” Mozart, biology whiz Charlotte Darwin, and multiskilled Leo da Vinci. The white default is in place, but the kids’ adult overseer has dark skin, and in Marlin’s illustrations so do Mo and charismatic team leader Grace O’Malley.
Full STEAM ahead on a series debut equally charged with personal issues and science in (dramatic) action. (author’s note) (Science fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-29521-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
A droll and clever opener likely to leave readers breathless both with laughter and anticipation.
The fourth wall suffers major breaches as young characters from a popular fantasy series and the "real real world" join forces to battle threats in both.
Born of a real mother and a fictional dad, Bethany has been searching for her father ever since he disappeared into a book on her fourth birthday. When classmate Owen sees her materializing out of a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, she unwillingly acquires a gobsmacked ally who persuades her to pick up a finding spell from the cliffhanger scene at the end of Volume 6 in his adored Kiel Gnomenfoot series. Owen tags along to do the unthinkable: change the plot by saving the Dumbledore-ish Magister from death at the hands of mad scientist and archvillain Dr. Verity. Crises snowball as Owen finds himself caught in a climactic battle between Magic and Science in the yet-to-be-published seventh volume. Meanwhile, Bethany is left on this side of the printed page to somehow prevent the Magister, enraged by the revelation that he's fictional, from freeing all made-up people and creatures and exiling their creators into a storybook to see how they like having no free will. Riley concocts a tasty mix of familiar tropes and truly inventive twists for his Gnomenfoot scenario plus a set of broadly rendered scene stealers for a supporting cast. For a plot, he dishes up a nonstop barrage of situational pickles for his increasingly desperate protagonists.
A droll and clever opener likely to leave readers breathless both with laughter and anticipation. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-0919-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
A muddled middle, with little sign of movement toward a final conflict or resolution.
Nightmarish visions prompt desperate gambles for young magic-wielder Fort as he continues his efforts to rescue his father from the mysterious Old Ones.
Showing no inclination to pick up the opener’s plodding pace, Riley marches his preteen spellcaster through wordy reveries and exposition, conveniently overheard conversations, and recurrent dream encounters with a foe given to ALL-CAPS bombast as one ill-starred rescue scheme gives way on the fly to others. Doing his best to shuck annoyed friends and allies who insist on saving his bacon anyway, Fort eventually finds himself in a subterranean realm facing dwarves, elves (one elf, anyway), huge monsters—and an Old One who turns out to be a dragon willing to help subdue his three repressive kindred elementals before laboriously “fathering” an egg. (Just to muddy the waters a bit more, the titular dragon turns out to be another one altogether, hiding back on Earth and remaining offstage throughout this episode.) Magic, mostly teleportation and telepathy with admixtures of mind control and the occasional exploding fireball, gets brisk workouts, but in the end, the dark is still rising. Fort seems too colorless to inspire the sort of loyalty he gets from his supporting cast, which is well stocked with firecrackers and wild cards. Again, Fort’s circle isn’t entirely white, but the default is in operation.
A muddled middle, with little sign of movement toward a final conflict or resolution. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-2572-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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