It offers some creepy moments and critters, but it’s more often a pale imitation of one of Brian Jacques’ woodland epics....
Over 10 years after Thorn Ogres of Hagwood (2002), a middle volume appears, doing more to indulge the author’s love of grotesque magical creatures than advance his derivative plotline.
The tale zips among points of view as well as back and forth from murky Hagwood Forest to the subterranean Unseelie Court and the mazes of tunnels and caverns deeper down. It sends diminutive Gamaliel Tumpkin and his shape-changing fellow werlings on a search for the hidden casket that holds the beating heart of Rhiannon Rigantona, murderous Queen of the Hollow Hill. The story reads more like a sendup than a credible quest fantasy. Along with silly names aplenty, Jarvis trucks in armies of odd creatures. Snaggle-featured spriggans and glutinous sluglungs (“Snot monsters!” as a revolted onlooker accurately exclaims) keep characters busy between encounters with the odd barn bogle, candle sprite or troll hag. One character is described as a “human dwarf,” and most of the other females are likewise evil, ugly, or, in the case of Gamaliel’s sister Kernella, fat, loud, stupid and in need of rescuing. Following various assaults, the questers and their pursuers gather for a climactic battle that, thanks to a contrived twist, proves indecisive and so leaves the door open for the next episode.
It offers some creepy moments and critters, but it’s more often a pale imitation of one of Brian Jacques’ woodland epics. With slime. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9921-0
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride.
Zipping back and forth in time atop outsized robo–bell bottoms, mad inventor Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) legs his way to center stage in this slightly less-labored continuation of episode 9.
The action commences after a rambling recap and a warning not to laugh or smile on pain of being forced to read Sarah Plain and Tall. Pilkey first sends his peevish protagonist back a short while to save the Earth (destroyed in the previous episode), then on to various prehistoric eras in pursuit of George, Harold and the Captain. It’s all pretty much an excuse for many butt jokes, dashes of off-color humor (“Tippy pressed the button on his Freezy-Beam 4000, causing it to rise from the depths of his Robo-Pants”), a lengthy wordless comic and two tussles in “Flip-o-rama.” Still, the chase kicks off an ice age, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Big Bang (here the Big “Ka-Bloosh!”). It ends with a harrowing glimpse of what George and Harold would become if they decided to go straight. The author also chucks in a poopy-doo-doo song with musical notation (credited to Albert P. Einstein) and plenty of ink-and-wash cartoon illustrations to crank up the ongoing frenzy.
Series fans, at least, will take this outing (and clear evidence of more to come) in stride. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-17536-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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