Episodic and lacking in tension.
Ryan takes his girlfriend on junkets into the past and discovers some of his own family’s tragic history in this middle volume in the series.
Wheeling in a Portal to the past with a 60-minute time limit, Haruni sends her 14-year-old magic hat–wearing protagonist off on a series of Adventures. Ryan runs with the bulls in Pamplona, sings mariachi in Mexico, and gets a close-up view of the first moon landing. Then, along with his popular new girlfriend, Violet, he witnesses the coronation of King Charles III and the storming of the Bastille, joins Blackbeard’s crew for a pirate battle, and rambles through war-torn Aachen in 1944. Aside perhaps from the Mexican venture, which relies heavily on the trope of poor but happy people sacrificing for others, these outings rarely lead to personal growth, nor do they make for particularly vivid set pieces. The author expends little effort on incorporating authentic historical details or fitting her travelers into each new setting—they arrive properly dressed and magically able to speak the language, for example. Subplots involving Ryan’s fence-mending with a repentant bully and some rough waters in his relationship with Violet feel shoehorned in, as do the flashback extracts from his grandpa’s diary. The trips do finally force the improbably secretive elder into explaining the dangers of time travel that he’s been darkly alluding to, and one such comes into play after much foreshadowing in a cliffhanger ending. The central cast reads white.
Episodic and lacking in tension. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798890221391
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Speaking Volumes
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable.
Six New Jersey 12-year-olds separated by decades race to ensure the “good guys” win World War II in this middle-grade work by the author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and her brother, a children's author and journalist.
It all starts with a ham radio that Alice, Lawrence, and Artie fool around with in 1944 and Henry, Frances, and Lukas find in 2023. It’s late April, and the 1944 kids worry about loved ones in combat, while the 2023 kids study the war in school. When, impossibly, the radio allows the kids to communicate across time, it doesn’t take long before they share information that changes history. Can the two sets of kids work across a 79-year divide to prevent the U.S.A. from becoming the Nazi-controlled dystopia of Westfallen? This propulsive thriller includes well-paced cuts between times that keep the pages turning. Like most people in their small New Jersey town, Alice, Artie, and Frances are white. In 1944, Lawrence, who’s Black, endures bigotry; in the U.S.A. of 2023, Henry’s biracial (white and Black) identity and Lukas’ Jewish one are unremarkable, but in Westfallen, Henry’s a “mischling” doing “work-learning,” and Lukas is a menial laborer. Alice’s and Henry’s dual first-person narration zooms in on the adventure, but readers who pull back may find themselves deeply uneasy with the summary consideration paid to the real-life fates of European Jews and disabled people. The cliffhanger ending will have them hoping for more thoughtful treatment in sequels to come.
Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable. (Science fiction/thriller. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781665950817
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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