By-the-numbers portal fantasy with little to distinguish it from the pack.
Three children discover their magical family legacy in Wilson’s middle-grade debut.
Thirteen-year-old Jack Gregson is an orphan—his mother died giving birth to him, and his father subsequently vanished. But he’s grown up surrounded by extended family in centuries-old Gregson Manor. The mansion contains a door that has never been opened. Jack and cousins Rosie and David even try dynamite to no avail. All it gets them is grounded from the annual family reunion, Jack’s “favorite day of the year.” Bored, they start looking through an old book Rosie found about the manor house. The children discover that the details change as the house does. The book guides them to a hidden attic, where they meet a mysterious woman called “the curator.” She tells the astonished children that the house and family are in grave danger, and they must recover a magical blue emerald to vanquish dark forces. They glean that the Gregson family has guarded a portal to other, fantastical worlds for hundreds of years—and that Jack is now the heir to this legacy, destined to protect Earth from the machinations of his evil ancestor, Richard Gregson, whose thirst for power was so great he used the portal for conquest. Jack, David, and Rosie will travel to strange planets and fight crazy odds as they try to stop Richard once and for all. We see flashes of imagination—Richard’s army, the Horde, which is a virulent “black mist,” is genuinely creepy. But the cast is underdeveloped. David likes football; Rosie likes books; and Jack likes both. But we aren’t told much more about them. Another drawback: Jack typically relies far more on artifacts in battles than his own abilities.
By-the-numbers portal fantasy with little to distinguish it from the pack.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-942624-24-0
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Crystal Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
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