THE SECRETS OF THE STORMFOREST

Strangeworlds faces its biggest challenge yet.

Flick’s life since she first entered the Strangeworlds Travel Agency has been a series of adventures in different worlds where her unusual magic is needed to shore up the multiverse. Now she and best friend Jonathan have discovered that all of the mysteries they’ve encountered in previous adventures were due to the magic-devouring Seren, who will destroy the multiverse if they aren’t stopped. Flick, now 13, must face what it means to have power as she negotiates loss and first love (with Jonathan’s cousin Avery, a girl literally from another world). As befits the greater stakes, this is an altogether less whimsical tale, with only one new world explored and most of the action focused on preparing to face the Seren; the emotional elements are likewise more intense as the nature of family and the purpose of power are explored. In a significant moment, Jonathan notes that they should honor the name used by the inhabitants of a world rather than using the Strangeworlds Society’s name. The mix of the mundane into the extraordinary is less pronounced than in previous entries, but wonderful touches of realism pop through, as when Flick must figure out how to balance school and family against saving the world—and grapple with how her day-to-day life is being changed, not always positively, by her Strangeworlds life. Positive representations of diversity in gender and sexuality are casually and seamlessly woven into the characterization.

A moving conclusion to a delightful trilogy.