Great, smart fun.
The second Tyme fantasy features dark-skinned Ella, whose journey of self-discovery—and perhaps true love—dovetails with her eventually becoming a champion for workers’ rights.
The remarriage of Ella’s widowed father has catapulted them into elite status among other business owners in the garment industry. Ella and her stepsiblings attend a posh school, but Ella resists the trappings and the attitudes. Meanwhile, Prince Dash Charming—recent breaker of the 150-year-old spell rendering all males of his line charming but unfaithful—is resisting attempts by his father to betroth him to a member of the Jacquard dynasty. More resistance brews at the National Academy of Fairy Godparenting due to a corrupt leader. The third-person narrative alternates perspective among Ella, Dash, and fairy godfathers Serge and Jasper, all endearing and believable characters. Their tales are as deftly interwoven as the vying houses’ fine garments, even as they reveal to young readers such dark, contemporary issues as enforced child labor, difficulties faced by working-class families, and the harm that is caused by grim factory conditions. Balancing such strong stuff as a graphically depicted garment-factory fire are liberal infusions of magic and humor, which includes a government with a House of Mortals and a House of Magic. Casual references to different skin colors and to LGBTQ characters are also commendable. The book stands alone while also complementing Grounded (2015), the first in the series.
Great, smart fun. (maps) (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-64271-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Breathless adventures in richly imagined settings—an entrancing sequel.
A teenager’s mission to help distressed magical creatures takes her into dangerous places and deadly situations in this folk tale–infused sequel to Once There Was (2023).
The stakes rise considerably this time around: Over the course of encounters with eldritch supernatural beings and a reclusive Persian cousin of (as it turns out) uncertain reliability, Marjan Dastani, now 16, learns that a legendary bird that brings stories to the world is about to be reborn. As a hatchling, it will be vulnerable to foes—notably the Fells, a ruthless organization of magical animal traffickers that is, to Marjan’s deep disgust, her main employer. Interspersing his chapters with fragmentary folk tales featuring orphans, quests, monsters, the titular bird, and hints of profound truths, Monsef sends his rousingly intense and sometimes difficult protagonist all over the map, from Berkeley to Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro, and remotest Finland. Hoping to find and protect the Bird, Marjan embarks on a headlong series of tests, betrayals, reversals, revelations, and confrontations. Better yet, along with dishing up a diverse human cast linked by refreshingly nuanced relationships, the author endows the supernatural being with subtle and surprising natures, abilities, and agendas. “The fae are fickle,” says one character. “One day they sing you the sweetest song. The next day they eat your cat.” Even jaded fantasy readers won’t be able to help but be beguiled.
Breathless adventures in richly imagined settings—an entrancing sequel. (source notes) (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781665928533
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes.
Eleven-year-old Georgie sets out to the rescue after seeing his dad snatched into thin air by a hideous figure.
In a confusing debut that reads like a first draft, the kidnapping impels the young slingshot expert to go from doggedly enduring vicious bullying at school to intrepidly plunging after his father through a portal to Scatterplot, an otherworldly realm where the memories of everyone in New York are uploaded by omnilingual Scribes. Classmates Apurva Aluwhalia (who’s cued South Asian) and Roscoe Harris (who reads Black and is confined to a role that’s largely limited to comic relief), each motivated by their own concerns, follow white-presenting Georgie on his adventure. In Scatterplot, they must remain alert for the “tribe” of “bad people” called Altercockers, formed by the exiled Rollie D. Meanwhile, Flint Eldritch, the menacing figure who was responsible for Georgie’s father’s disappearance, is bent on using the Aetherquill, a magical pen that can rewrite reality in unpredictable ways, to replace all those recorded memories with fake ones. In a story that’s marred by stilted dialogue, flat characterization, and awkward turns of phrase, Georgie and his friends, along with Scatterplot siblings Edie and Ore, embark on a quest to save both his father and the entire realm. The puss-oozing, misshapen villain Flint, crawling with bugs, does at least provide a memorably lurid element of horror. The novel ends with an abrupt cliffhanger.
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798886453164
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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