A satisfying, action-packed return to the world of the Red Hand and a daring trio.
In this fourth volume of an adventure series, a resourceful Moroccan orphan named Tariq and his loyal friends set out to return an ancient diary to its rightful home.
It’s 1914. Readers last saw intrepid cohorts Tariq, Fez, and Aseem stranded in the ocean after their hot air balloon crashed. Their friend Melbourne Jack died in the accident, but not before making Tariq promise to return a valuable artifact—Alexander the Great’s diary—to a circus in India led by Jack’s mentor, Foster Crowe. Fortunately, the boys are rescued by a band of sea Gypsies, led by the charming Capt. Scopas. Scopas desires revenge against Abdullah Ozek, an evil gangster in Constantinople, and asks the trio to help him. Along the way, the boys befriend a young woman named Pakize, a talented thief who steals to help her struggling neighborhood make ends meet, and discover that Ozek runs an illegal exotic animal trade. Meanwhile, English schoolgirl Margaret Owens sets out to rescue her classmate Inez from the German soldiers who captured her. Together, the girls must race through the Black Forest to France before the determined Maj. Lars Hostetler can catch them. And Foster follows the sinister Wu Chiang to Europe to stop him from using the power of the Red Hand Scrolls to start a world war. O’Neill (Legends of the Rif, 2015, etc.), an Ian Fleming for the middle-grade set, manages to smoothly jump among his groups of characters and their various escapades around the world—from Constantinople to Kathmandu, Bremen to Sarajevo—without leaving the reader confused about where each storyline left off. The narrative delivers rich cultural details, including vivid descriptions of delicious food and exotic locales (“Constantinople presented herself in full glory to the three boys. Her buildings were cast in a golden hue….On the hillside of the city, seven humongous and beautiful mosques, each with long and narrow towers called minarets, glowed in the morning sunshine”). Readers should feel as though they too are traversing the globe every time they fall back into this fast-paced tale. The pages will likely fly by far too quickly for the series’ loyal fans, who will be left waiting eagerly for the next installment. A warning: several moments of graphic violence might be too much for more squeamish young readers.
A satisfying, action-packed return to the world of the Red Hand and a daring trio.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9905469-9-3
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Black Ship Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hillenbrand takes license with the familiar song (the traditional words and music are reproduced at the end) to tell an enchanting story about baby animals picked up by the train and delivered to the children’s zoo. The full-color drawings are transportingly jolly, while the catchy refrain—“See the engine driver pull his little lever”—is certain to delight readers. Once the baby elephant, flamingo, panda, tiger, seal, and kangaroo are taken to the zoo by the train, the children—representing various ethnic backgrounds, and showing one small girl in a wheelchair—arrive. This is a happy book, filled with childhood exuberance. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201804-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sloppy first novel that shows glimmers of promise.
A boy wizard afflicted with a rare disease battles the forces of evil in this debut fantasy novel.
Feslen Raster, an adopted 14-year-old boy suffering from a rare blood disorder, is viewed as “abnormal”–by official edict, all abnormal citizens are to be kept out of sight. Only his adoptive family’s high social standing allows him to lead a somewhat normal life, though he is still the object of much public ridicule. Feslen does have a few supporters, however: his brother Duxan, his friend Ka-Wei and the aged martial-arts teacher Master Chai, who has taken the young man under his wing. Master Chai sees Feslen’s untapped potential as a powerful mage, and even suspects he may be “the One” prophesied by the ancients to save the world from impending doom, in the form of a group of evil wizards conspiring to take over the land. When Master Chai is murdered and his daughter Mei Xue kidnapped, Feslen vows to rescue her. First, though, he must corral the vast but untamed magical gifts with which he’s been blessed. Embarking on his mission with a motley crew consisting of his brother, Ka-Wei, a mysterious princess, a thief and another novice mage, Feslen encounters the usual array of monsters and spirits on a journey that becomes a coming-of-age experience–both emotionally and magically–for the young wizard. Kang’s debut certainly won’t win any points for style. But despite a derivative, predictable plot and countless mechanical issues, the author’s marriage of Eastern and Western elements in a fantasy setting is intriguingly rendered, and the empathy and love with which Fester is portrayed will keep readers interested.
A sloppy first novel that shows glimmers of promise.Pub Date: July 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-595-37563-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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