There’s plenty of action, but it’s hard to tell where this episode fits into the main storyline (if there is one).
Wildwitch-in-training Clara Ash faces both familial and life-threatening challenges on her 13th birthday, plus leeches—lots of leeches.
Blood magic works in both literal and figurative ways in this Danish series’ fourth episode. Clara at last reaches détente with her harshly anti-magic mother after learning of a gruesome tragedy—but a weird leech’s bite leaves her father comatose and leads her into a confrontation with Bravita Bloodling, a powerful undead witch on the verge of escaping four centuries of imprisonment. Kaaberbøl trots in a large cast of witches (including the only evident nonwhite character, who has “cinnamon skin”) and animal wildfriends introduced in previous episodes, shovels in more squirming leeches to raise the “ick” factor, and cranks up the climax with storm, fire, and flood as well as fierce magic clashes. But along with gathering an army of wild animals that forces Clara to promise something, she knows not what, on her Tridecimal Night, the author hints at challenges to come by leaving Bravita Bloodling’s fate ambiguous and strewing the aftermath with mysteriously comatose wildwitches. Eason’s sparse pen-and-ink drawings put faces on select characters.
There’s plenty of action, but it’s hard to tell where this episode fits into the main storyline (if there is one). (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78269-086-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Further developing the credibility-stretching premise of Dormia (2009)—that the narcoleptic residents of a secret country are more active when asleep than awake—this sequel carries heavy-lidded half-Dormian Alfonso on a circuitous route from the catacombs of Paris to the icy Urals in pursuit both of his father and an evil 600-year-old hemophiliac superwarrior. Along with folding in many flashbacks and references to the previous episode, the authors strew the plotscape with mysterious magic boxes and balls, giant “snow snakes” and huge trees that forcibly put Alfonso to sleep any time the plot needs him to do something he normally wouldn’t or couldn’t. A point of view that freely switches among characters drains the dramatic tension—Alfonso’s long-missing father, for instance, suddenly shows up in his own subplot halfway through. Needed gear is always conveniently at hand, and much of the action either takes place offstage or is described like this: “…at the moment that the dagger pricked Alfonso’s shirt, he moved his torso so forcefully and suddenly that the man fell to the floor.” Fantasy fans can find better with their eyes closed. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-48037-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
The author of Bran Hambric: The Fairfield Curse (2009) dishes up an equally maladroit sequel featuring the same sort of nonsensical plot, clumsy satirical elements and ham-fisted writing. Tucking in lines like, “It knew his name, which was enough to send terror through his skin,” and, “the creature leapt forward, striking his finger with her teeth,” Nation sends his young wizard-in-training on a rescue mission after a mysterious Key left him by his dead mother explodes with magic one random night and sucks the soul of his best friend/main squeeze Astara into a trap (her corpse conveniently disappears from its buried coffin some time later). Joined along the way by his previously unknown father and a Tinkerbell-style vampire fairy with obscure loyalties and motives, Bran eventually finds and destroys the trap (and the Key—supposedly, that is) in the sort of running battle with the mage who killed his mother that pauses while he dives into a lake to rescue the miraculously alive Astara and ends with everyone pretty much back where they started, poised for the next episode. Not a stand-alone, or, for that matter, a stand-at-all. (Fantasy. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4022-4059-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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