The main characters and the continuing story both come along so smartly (and Harry at last shows a glimmer of interest in...
The Harry Potter epic (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, p. 888, etc.) continues to gather speed as Harry enters his third year at the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry and does battle with the traitor behind his parents’ deaths.
Besides coping with the usual adversaries’sneering classmate Draco Malfoy, evocatively-named Potions Master Snape—the young wizard-in-training has a new worry with the escape of Sirius Black, murderous minion of archenemy Lord Voldemort, from the magicians’ prison of Azkaban. Folding in subplots and vividly conceived magical creatures—Azkaban’s guards, known as dementors, are the very last brutes readers would want to meet in a dark alley—with characteristic abandon, Rowling creates a busy backdrop for Harry as she pushes him through a series of terrifying encounters and hard-fought games of Quidditch, on the way to a properly pulse-pounding climax strewn with mistaken identities and revelations about his dead father.
The main characters and the continuing story both come along so smartly (and Harry at last shows a glimmer of interest in the opposite sex, a sure sign that the tides of adolescence are lapping at his toes) that the book seems shorter than its page count: have readers clear their calendars if they are fans, or get out of the way if they are not. (Fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1999
ISBN: 0-439-13635-0
Page Count: 431
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1999
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Inventive trials and supporting characters boost this otherwise standard-issue quest fantasy. Middle-schooler Jason falls through a zoo hippo’s mouth into Lyrian, a land ruled by a wizard named Maldor, whose only weakness is a magical Word that will unmake him. Each of that Word’s six syllables are hidden behind different defenses, and Jason and sidekick Rachel—a lost Beyonder like him, who proves to be just as intrepid and at least as pig-stubborn—face a series of trials. There is a lake in which anything that stops moving for even an instant gets sucked down, a tree (in the middle of a swamp well-stocked with giant carnivorous toads) that robs interlopers of their short-term memories, a deadly political battle waged with riddles and other tests. Along with such allies as a gent who can detach and reattach any of his body parts (including his head) at will and a warrior who gets to start over as a 20-year-old any time he’s killed, Mull provides his young protagonists with a foe as genuinely clever as he is powerful and rescues an ambling plot with a devastating climactic twist. Readers fond of fantasies that don’t take themselves too seriously will enjoy this trilogy opener. (Fantasy. 10-13)
Pub Date: March 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4169-9792-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
More knightly shenanigans, tongue deeply in cheek.
Knights-in-training Tim and Belinda undertake a terrifying sea voyage to fetch a golden fleece and a few other treasures.
Mostly what’s terrifying is that they have Sir Fass, Sir Render, and the rest of the Kingdom of Merryland’s inept, aptly named, and, as it turns out, treacherous Knight Brigade as shipmates…though surviving such nautical hazards as sirens, not to mention Scylla and Charybdis, are (not unlike a monstrous bargleboar, whose allergy to paprika leaves everyone covered in snot) nothing to sneeze at. Cribbing blithely from ancient sources but working in some inventive twists of his own—the song of the sirens, for instance, is so awful that rather than luring sailors to their deaths, it results in them wrecking their ships to avoid hearing it—Gibbs steers his young adventurers from one near disaster to the next before doing readers the disservice of leaving the pair hurtling toward certain death on the last page. As in previous outings, Curtis adds comical line drawings of knights in armor grimacing or looking confused to nearly every spread, and the author pauses the action periodically to define relevant vocabulary building words like overcompensating, nauseous, and (irritatingly) cliffhanger. Most of the cast presents White in the interior art, though Belinda appears to be Black.
More knightly shenanigans, tongue deeply in cheek. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 9781665917445
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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