A solid conclusion to a trilogy that, though overcrowded and about a half volume too long, is nonetheless threaded with...
Multiple threats to his beloved Urwald send tree whisperer Jinx down magical Paths of Ice and Fire in this populous closer.
Readers who haven’t followed Jinx from his eponymous beginning (2013) will likely stumble along behind in confusion as he makes his way through crowds of new and previously introduced (and uniformly contentious) wizards, witches, werewolves, trolls, elves and human refugees from two worlds in a desperate effort to save his (equally contentious) trees from three invading armies and the evil wizard Bonemaster. Ominously, not-so-cryptic prophecies indicate that he will succeed only by overcoming his stubborn reluctance to kill and embracing the Bonemaster’s icy “deathforce”—a moral test he’s been avoiding. The pseudonymous author saddles Jinx with other challenges too, from a really close friend bearing a curse that forces her to answer any question with the truth to an almost satirically archetypal journey up a glass mountain and then down through Eldritch Depths to the Nadir of All Things. Many references to the mixed hazards and benefits of choosing paths, keeping to them and leaving them add further thematic underpinnings.
A solid conclusion to a trilogy that, though overcrowded and about a half volume too long, is nonetheless threaded with proper amounts of heroism, humor and ingenious twists of character. (map, not seen) (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-212996-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
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It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Near the end of World War II, two kids join their parents in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
Max, 12, lives with his parents and his older sister in a Berlin that’s under constant air bombardment. During one such raid, a mortally wounded man stumbles into the white German family’s home and gasps out his last wish: “The Führer must die.” With this nighttime visitation, Max and Gerta discover their parents have been part of a resistance cell, and the siblings want in. They meet a colorful band of upper-class types who seem almost too whimsical to be serious. Despite her charming levity, Prussian aristocrat and cell leader Frau Becker is grimly aware of the stakes. She enlists Max and Gerta as couriers who sneak forged identification papers to Jews in hiding. Max and Gerta are merely (and realistically) cogs in the adults’ plans, but there’s plenty of room for their own heroism. They escape capture, rescue each other when they’re caught out during an air raid, and willingly put themselves repeatedly at risk to catch a spy. The fictional plotters—based on a mix of several real anti-Hitler resistance cells—are portrayed with a genuine humor, giving them the space to feel alive even in such a slim volume.
It’s great to see these kids “so enthusiastic about committing high treason.” (historical note) (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-35902-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
A lighter-than-air blend of knightly exploits and rib-tickling twists.
Princess Grace of Merryland needs rescuing again, forcing two young knights-in-training to face a series of challenges, from hungry cave sharks to a minotaur named Chad.
Actually, Princess Grace is perfectly capable of rescuing herself—again: see Once Upon a Tim (2022)—except that this time, kidnappers have stashed her in a room that’s locked and bolted on the outside…and in the middle of a maze billed, supposedly, as “the most complex and dastardly labyrinth in the world.” So it is that former peasants Tim and his more capable friend Bull—otherwise known as Belinda when she’s not disguised as a boy—plunge into a mess of dark and bewildering tunnels, armed with a ball of twine provided by the surprisingly sapient village idiot Ferkle, to face a series of deadly threats…though the most legendary of all turns out to be an amiable monster with the body of a bull and the head of, well, a dude. Throughout Gibbs’ lighthearted, laugh-out-loud tale, Curtis supplies proper notes of farce or stark terror as appropriate in flurries of line drawings that present most of the humans and the monsters with human features as White, though Belinda appears to present as Black. Along the way, Tim adds educational value to his narrative by flagging and then pausing to define vocabulary-building words like laborious and vexing.
A lighter-than-air blend of knightly exploits and rib-tickling twists. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-9928-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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BOOK REVIEW
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