Thrilling, heartrending and unexpectedly sweet; Petra's adventures could not have had a more satisfying conclusion....
A slambang finale to a refreshingly different fantasy trilogy.
Petra Kronos is determined to free her father from his transformation into one of Prince Rodolfo's ghastly Gray Men. But as she searches for a magical cure, first in the hidden Roma homeland and then back in her native Bohemia, she is caught up in the greater European intrigues of kingdoms, spies and rebellions. Despite the high stakes and epic scope, peppered with real Renaissance personages and events, the focus is firmly upon Petra and her friends and the choices each is forced to make. The narrative jumps between viewpoint characters, sometimes to jarring effect, but most often stays with Petra (who learns to temper her hotheaded stubbornness to meet overwhelming challenges) and the Roma trickster Neel (who is forced to grow up beneath the weight of unexpected responsibility). Breakneck pacing is paired with practical, charmingly unsentimental prose, which renders the rare flashes of dry wit and the understated romantic subplot all the more effective. Short, action-packed chapters lead to a climax of heroic courage, violent horror and tragic sacrifice, and an epilogue perfectly admixes restrained melancholy and tender hope.
Thrilling, heartrending and unexpectedly sweet; Petra's adventures could not have had a more satisfying conclusion. (Fantasy. 11-15)Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-33678-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Awful on a number of levels—but tidily over at last.
The rebellion against an evil archmage and his bowler-topped minions wends its way to a climax.
Dispatching five baddies on the first two pages alone, wand-waving villain-exterminator Vega Jane gathers a motley army of fellow magicals, ghosts, and muggles—sorry, “Wugmorts”—for a final assault on Necro and his natty Maladons. As Necro repeatedly proves to be both smarter and more powerful than Vega Jane, things generally go badly for the rebels, who end up losing their hidden refuge, many of their best fighters, and even the final battle. Baldacci is plainly up on his ancient Greek theatrical conventions, however; just as all hope is lost, a divinity literally descends from the ceiling to referee a winner-take-all duel, and thanks to an earlier ritual that (she and readers learn) gives her a do-over if she’s killed (a second deus ex machina!), Vega Jane comes away with a win…not to mention an engagement ring to go with the magic one that makes her invisible and a new dog, just like the one that died heroically. Measuring up to the plot’s low bar, the narrative too reads like low-grade fanfic, being laden with references to past events, characters who only supposedly died, and such lines as “a spurt of blood shot out from my forehead,” “they started falling at a rapid number,” and “[h]is statement struck me on a number of levels.”
Awful on a number of levels—but tidily over at last. (glossary) (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-26393-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
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