Roving the reeking back streets of Victorian London, a printer’s apprentice falls into a bewildering—to readers, at least—tangle of corruption, crime, deceit, betrayal and murder. A case of mistaken identity and an ominous overheard conversation send young Mog into a brutal underworld where thugs war over a shipment of a new, potent drug from India. Carrying a personal secret, anticlimactically revealed partway through, Mog survives repeated brushes with violence, forms an uneasy alliance with a previously unsuspected twin, slips briefly backward in time (or maybe not) and catches tantalizing hints of family tragedy—all on the way to a wild climax that thins the supporting cast considerably, but leaves the waters still thoroughly muddy. Bajoria provides a suitably atmospheric setting, a whiff of the supernatural and plenty of cliffhangers, but leaves so many dots unconnected that the tale needs a sequel to prop it up. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-316-01090-1
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
Williams (ABC Kids, below, etc.) takes readers back to a squalid, brutal 15th century for this heavy tale of a family tormented by its dreadful occupation. Because Lily's father and mother are the local lord’s executioners, she and her parents must live outside the town walls, banned from the church, feared, and shunned by all. Ironically, these killers are also healers, making ends meet between executions by providing occasional furtive visitors with herbal poultices and remedies. Lily’s father takes refuge in drink; she and her mother in each other and in caring for injured wild animals. Then the fragile equilibrium that Lily has built shatters as, in succession, her mother sickens and dies, peer pressure destroys a budding friendship with a town child, and her naïve notion that criminals automatically deserve what they get unravels when she witnesses horrible punishments meted out for trivial offenses, then learns that her own mother escaped hanging by marrying her father. She leaves in the end, hoping to escape the stigma. Despite a contrived final hint that Lily has made a new and happier life for herself, this brief story is so weighed down by its tormented cast and narrow setting that it's more akin to John Morressey’s grim Juggler (1996) than Karen Cushman’s Midwife’s Apprentice (1995). (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8050-6234-3
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
More “Dear America” than True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, this chatty, awkwardly titled epistolary tale takes a mid–19th-century child on a 19-month voyage aboard a New England whaler with her mother and her father, the captain. Gathering a small menagerie and a flirtatious young third mate for company, Celia experiences terrifying storms, the gruesome business of whale butchering, long stretches of boredom relieved by birthdays, Christmases, and occasional stops to “gam” (visit) other ships. There is also a welcome layover in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) that turns tragic when her mother has, then loses, a baby. At last, discouraged by the scarcity of whales, Celia’s father decides to turn homeward, only to succumb to a mortal illness that leaves the two women to derail an attempted mutiny and to navigate back around Cape Horn to Massachusetts. Demas (Littlest Matryoshka, 1999) laces Celia’s narrative with happy encounters and places her amidst a cast of familiar, well-defined character types, so that her journey is more a coming-of-age adventure than a tally of crushing disasters. Readers will be carried along by the quick pace and the ever-present sense that fortune and misfortune lurk just beneath the next rolling wave. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: June 30, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-028717-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
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