An entertaining, satisfying take on the magical boarding school tale.
In this debut middle-grade fantasy, a boy learns his true elven heritage and fights to reclaim it.
Cooper Peru is in most ways an average 12-year-old boy. A seventh grader at Thacker Avenue Middle School, he’s of medium height, medium build, has “unremarkable” brown hair, and earns average grades. But he wears headphones at all times to cover up his oddly pointed ears and is strangely attracted to the forest; he’s “more comfortable in the company of trees” than anywhere else. After some puzzling events, including Cooper’s unusual success at an archery contest, he’s selected to attend the “ShadowBranch Institute where he will study archery and enjoy outdoor adventure!” Before going, he learns that he was adopted by his mother when he was 5 or 6, and at ShadowBranch, Cooper discovers an even more astonishing truth: He is part Elpherial, or Elf, and part Viking. Not only that, he’s an Altherion Allseer and the heir to a great fortune. But as such, Cooper also faces resistance from jealous factions within ShadowBranch and from Parradale, a rival school. More importantly, he is threatened by the Horde (once elves, now monsters) whose leader, Arzenick Addick, wants the Cooper family’s artifacts. Cooper must train relentlessly, become an Elf of Distinction, solve some mysteries, and claim ownership of his clan’s chamber—if he can. In his novel, Mister E. uses some plot elements that will feel very familiar to Harry Potter fans, such as the orphaned boy with a special mission, and the unusual school with its lessons, friendships, rivalries, and history. Nevertheless, the elven lore and woodcraft/archery aspect deftly freshen up this tale as does an unexpected twist on Cooper’s family story. Though the plot, as with the Potter series, presents serious challenges and deadly enemies, the author also shows a sly sense of humor through some truly groanworthy puns. For example, Horde raiders of Elven stone-built temples are called Stone Temple Pirates, and a crude, drunken elf is named “Hooka Zenblow” (say it fast).
An entertaining, satisfying take on the magical boarding school tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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