A fantasy tale featuring delightful characters that primes readers for an ongoing series.
In Colless’ middle-grade debut, a young boy may be a prophesied king who, according to legend, will save the world when it needs him most.
Peter Blue celebrates his 11th birthday at the Gum Tree Rest Home in Australia, where he’s spent the last five years. His parents, Byron and Thelma Blue, died in a bush fire, which he mysteriously survived. At the home, the boy finds his dad’s old Global Advanced Intelligence Agency jacket—a wearable, wi-fi–capable device. Inside a pocket is a card for “Spiral Hall / School for the Ecodemically Gifted.” The school is part of Peter’s quest, according to an old, bearded man named Tollen, who appears in his dreams. The boy reluctantly leaves his grandmother Nonna LaRosa at the home and travels to London, where he stays with his Aunty Surla (his mother’s sister) and Uncle Gorrman while attending school. Unfortunately, Peter must cope with bullies trying to steal his dad’s jacket, and Gorrman doesn’t want his nephew to attend Spiral Hall at all. Some there think that Peter may be the Sleeping King—the destined light during dark days to come. Meanwhile, frightening beings known as Anthrogs are actively searching for Peter, and they want to prevent him from foiling their upcoming “siege on the human race.” Colless’ tale is populated by richly colorful characters, such as former millionaire Devlin Dean, who’s staying at the rest home because the bank took his mansion and other belongings. The book is clearly a series launch, as the Anthrog Overlord and his Drones make only a couple of appearances, and there’s merely a hint of the Sleeping King’s potential power. However, readers will surely look forward to seeing more of these characters, including the other motley but endearing residents of the rest home or Pickles, a baby wallaby that Peter helps to rescue. The author expertly assembles scores of dialogue scenes involving multiple characters. The environmentalist message is also cleverly integrated: Peter’s rather unlikable aunt and uncle, for example, use plastic utensils and containers almost exclusively—and don’t recycle.
A fantasy tale featuring delightful characters that primes readers for an ongoing series.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5043-8865-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.
A teenage orphan enters a curious school and encounters mysteries and dangerous secrets in this first installment of a debut YA fantasy series.
Life in Croswald is about to change for 16-year-old orphan Ivy, a lowly castle maid in charge of the kitchen “scaldrons,” oven-heating, fire-breathing dragons. Fleeing the castle after a messy scaldron mishap, Ivy hops a strange conveyance that transports her to a school for potential quill-wielding, spell-casting “scrivenists.” (The author’s creative language—students are “sqwinches,” and “hairies” are lanterns housing fairies with luminous hair—is one of the book’s pleasures.) Learning that there is more to her gift for sketching than she realized, Ivy studies spells and the magical properties of inks and quills, but strange things keep happening. Why is an old scrivenist, long thought dead, working in secret? Why is the head of the oddly familiar school moving paintings to the “Forgetting Room” so that no one will remember they existed? How can Ivy get a look at a certain journal stored there, and what does it have to do with her recurrent dream? And why has Ivy drawn the interest of the Dark Queen of Croswald and her truly fearsome Cloaked Brood? The intrigue is layered with such whimsical inventions as one school lunchroom run by ghostly bad cooks and another by a jester who is best avoided, scrivenists who end their lives as tomes in a library, and small houses pulled by a gargantuan flying beast with its own weather system. Yes, there are many Harry Potter–ish elements: a school for young wand-wielders, quirky shops dealing in enchanted student supplies, eccentric characters, spells gone wrong, an evil pursuer. But Night’s blend of magic, danger, and suspense (and a touch of steampunk) is a well-realized, fresh fantasy world all its own, and Ivy is an appealing protagonist of relatable complexity. A few bobbles: Ivy seems to go without food for long stretches; the use of “effected” rather than “affected”; a professor who is both standing and perched on a chair.
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9969486-5-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Stories Untold Press
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In this riveting futuristic novel, Spaz, a teenage boy with epilepsy, makes a dangerous journey in the company of an old man and a young boy. The old man, Ryter, one of the few people remaining who can read and write, has dedicated his life to recording stories. Ryter feels a kinship with Spaz, who unlike his contemporaries has a strong memory; because of his epilepsy, Spaz cannot use the mind probes that deliver entertainment straight to the brain and rot it in the process. Nearly everyone around him uses probes to escape their life of ruin and poverty, the result of an earthquake that devastated the world decades earlier. Only the “proovs,” genetically improved people, have grass, trees, and blue skies in their aptly named Eden, inaccessible to the “normals” in the Urb. When Spaz sets out to reach his dying younger sister, he and his companions must cross three treacherous zones ruled by powerful bosses. Moving from one peril to the next, they survive only with help from a proov woman. Enriched by Ryter’s allusions to nearly lost literature and full of intriguing, invented slang, the skillful writing paints two pictures of what the world could look like in the future—the burned-out Urb and the pristine Eden—then shows the limits and strengths of each. Philbrick, author of Freak the Mighty (1993) has again created a compelling set of characters that engage the reader with their courage and kindness in a painful world that offers hope, if no happy endings. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-08758-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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