A hero breaks the mold in this inventive and energetic series installment.
This third volume of a YA series sees a boy’s mortal friend trapped in hell.
Eighth grader Philip Engel once trained to replace Lucifer as ruler of hell. Now, after succeeding in an adventure that extended his mother’s life, he’s begun to focus more on his mortal circle and less on his periodic trips to the dangerous underworld. His friendship with Sabrina, a classmate crush, is blossoming. One day, they paint props together for a school play. When she spills paint all over herself, Philip fails to connect her unnatural clumsiness to the antics of Satina, his tempter friend from hell, who is jealous. Later, as school ends, he feels an intense pain. He discovers that Sam, a former bully and current friend, took a “summoning pill” from his belongings, mistaking it for a pain reliever. Sam has been transported to hell, and Philip has no choice but to take the second of two pills and follow him. Once there, Philip reunites with Satina and her father, Blackhorn. He learns that Sam’s mortal transgressions might place him at any number of punishment venues. More alarmingly, someone altered Sam’s Soul Book. And he and Philip are no longer friends, but enemies once again. In this latest volume of this dark and clever series, Andersen’s hero acknowledges that hell “is repetition.” Nevertheless, the author’s eerie atmospherics prove a continuous wonder, as in the description of “ink-black trees with thorns as long and sharp as daggers.” The adventure, translated from the Danish by Todd, also opens up in ways only teased previously, as when Philip visits paradise and meets Jehovah. Humor remains vital to the narrative, as when God warns Philip about using a chair Jesus built: “Miracles, he can manage those, but carpentry was never his strong point.” Philip’s budding romance with Satina and the possibility of meeting his father, Victor, expand the hero’s arc. The notion that Aziel, Philip’s nemesis, is building an army of those who want revenge on Lucifer—who made everyone in hell mortal—raises the stakes and will have fans clamoring for the next volume.
A hero breaks the mold in this inventive and energetic series installment.Pub Date: March 19, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Ebulliently original.
Who can't love a story about a Nigerian-American 12-year-old with albinism who discovers latent magical abilities and saves the world?
Sunny lives in Nigeria after spending the first nine years of her life in New York. She can't play soccer with the boys because, as she says, "being albino made the sun my enemy," and she has only enemies at school. When a boy in her class, Orlu, rescues her from a beating, Sunny is drawn in to a magical world she's never known existed. Sunny, it seems, is a Leopard person, one of the magical folk who live in a world mostly populated by ignorant Lambs. Now she spends the day in mundane Lamb school and sneaks out at night to learn magic with her cadre of Leopard friends: a handsome American bad boy, an arrogant girl who is Orlu’s childhood friend and Orlu himself. Though Sunny's initiative is thin—she is pushed into most of her choices by her friends and by Leopard adults—the worldbuilding for Leopard society is stellar, packed with details that will enthrall readers bored with the same old magical worlds. Meanwhile, those looking for a touch of the familiar will find it in Sunny's biggest victories, which are entirely non-magical (the detailed dynamism of Sunny's soccer match is more thrilling than her magical world saving).
Ebulliently original. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: April 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-01196-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
A sweet yet thinly developed narrative.
Sylvie Jones is on her way to the Brindille School of Culinary Arts & Magic in this YA debut by a former Top Chef contestant.
Due to her mother’s alleged cheating years ago at the famed Golden Whisk—the biggest magical cooking competition around—Sylvie has been admitted only provisionally into Brindille’s six-week preparatory program. The Council of Culinary Sages has tasked her with proving her trustworthiness and talent by finishing first in her class. If Sylvie succeeds, she’ll be officially allowed to take the enrollment test. If she fails, she’ll be banned from “cooking up magic” altogether. Right before Sylvie arrives at Brindille, a mysterious stranger informs her that she’s part of a decades-old prophecy—her name is even written upon the Apple of Discord, a carefully guarded magical treasure borne by “a secret tree that only produce[s] fruit in times of great danger.” Now Sylvie is even more determined to succeed and clear her family’s name. While the overarching plot might hold the attention of ardent fans of magic school stories, the execution falls flat. Experienced genre readers will be disappointed to find that the narrative lacks depth and relies on cliched idioms and tired wordplay, and the culinary elements of the magical world are in need of more robust worldbuilding. Sylvie is cued white, and there’s diversity among the supporting characters.
A sweet yet thinly developed narrative. (recipes) (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798890033635
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Page Street
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
