This trilogy opener may not be consistently inventive, but there are enough peculiar, oddball moments to keep readers...
This debut fantasy tests the theory that a great opening and closing number will cause an audience to forgive almost anything.
The novel ends with a spectacular battle, including a sword fight with skeleton bones. And the dialogue in the opening chapters is endlessly entertaining. Early on, George learns why Aunt Henrietta’s nickname is Chicken: “Chicken is long for Hen, which is short for Henrietta.” But the chapters in between are a standard-issue if ramblingly lengthy fantasy story, with characters searching for magical pieces of a talisman that will save the world from destruction. A few moments are gloriously odd, though, such as a scene in which a character reaches down a depressed dragon’s throat to ignite his pilot light. And the protagonist, George (she hates to be called Georgina), is always engaging. She’s as unfailingly polite as Alice was in Wonderland. The characters are just eccentric enough to keep people reading through the pedestrian chapters. (The human ones also seem to be just as white as the people in Carroll’s novels.) Hector, the dragon, is a highlight. He sticks up for his home world by saying, “We’re very cultured, you know. We have public-access television and ballets.”
This trilogy opener may not be consistently inventive, but there are enough peculiar, oddball moments to keep readers surprised from beginning to end. (Fantasy. 9-14)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-370-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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