A well-told story of one girl’s growing confidence and strength in a magical land.
Rausin’s debut children’s fantasy novel offers a story of magic, family and trust.
Sixth-grader Amelia grew up in foster and group homes and never knew her parents. She suffered a mysterious accident in the woods that left her paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair. Amelia deals with the aftermath as best as she can, supported by her friend Greg and his Grandma K. She feels alienated at school, and she prefers to read fantasy novels, telling herself, “Focus on the words, read, escape; you’re not really here in this classroom. You’re far away in a land where wheelchairs don’t exist.” On the way to a camping trip, Amelia, Greg and Grandma K are in a terrible car accident in which Grandma K dies; Greg and Amelia are transported by a strange vortex to the middle of an ocean, where they meet a queen disguised as a tortoise, who informs them they are in the land of Mystic. They’re told that the first lesson they need to learn is that they “must trust in order to learn to survive.” This advice serves them well in their ensuing adventure; the pair becomes emotionally closer, and Amelia learns things she never knew about herself and her family. The pace picks up when Greg is captured by a minion of Ralient, an evil wizard who aspires to kill the queen and become the powerful Guardian of Mystic. During Amelia’s journey to rescue Greg, she learns how to trust herself fully and taps into great reserves of courage and magic. Overall, this well-written fantasy novel provides a strong, self-reliant female protagonist. Rausin depicts the children realistically and handles the subject of Amelia’s disability with compassion and accuracy. The world of Mystic is portrayed as geographically and politically complex, with a variety of wizards and magical creatures. Toward the novel’s conclusion, the plot moves very quickly, and the fast pace will likely keep young readers’ attention.
A well-told story of one girl’s growing confidence and strength in a magical land.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1480002463
Page Count: 172
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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