Typical of middle volumes: much backing and forthing to not enough purpose.
It’s hard not to like a fantasy that is set in an argumentative magical forest, but Blackwood squanders the promise of her debut (Jinx, 2013) with a sequel that just spins its wheels.
Though he’s repeatedly assured that he doesn’t know who he is or what he’s doing, 12-year-old wizard-in-training Jinx continues to explore the nebulous extent of his burgeoning magical powers. He does this both at a school in the city of Samara, where he discovers a new style of magic, and in the Urwald, where he can draw huge amounts of raw power from the trees—but his ability to hear and speak to them is a mixed blessing. Meanwhile, his crabby mentor, Simon Magus, is recaptured by the Bonemaster, an affable archnemesis who has also taken to exterminating the Urwald’s scattered human communities, and Simon’s scholarly wife, Sophie, has been imprisoned. Further complicating matters, Reven (aka Prince Raymond) has given the whole forest fantods by promoting a profitable lumbering operation on the way to reclaiming his throne. Blackwood drops hints of a larger conflict looming and continues to throw her protagonist into dangerous situations. At odds with this are tongue-in-cheek plot elements, such as Jinx’s ability to see thoughts as pink puffy clouds or other shapes, cryptic remarks delivered at odd moments by elves and an oddly rational werewolf.
Typical of middle volumes: much backing and forthing to not enough purpose. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-212993-2
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Will likely sell well, as usual—but also as usual, the essays and the storyline are aimed at different audiences.
George and Annie again tackle “crazy squillionaire” Alioth Merak as the megalomaniac takes another stab at dominating the world (and beyond).
As in the series’ four previous episodes, the plot is largely a jumble that loosely connects densely factual—or, as appropriate, speculative—tiny-type side essays, many credited to specific experts. The 19 here are on such cutting-edge topics as cyberbullying, driverless cars, the origins of our oceans, the challenges of living on Mars, and the nature of objective reality. George and Annie, both white to judge from Parsons’ spot illustrations (Annie is labeled “dyslexic”), are elated to be accepted into an astronaut-training program, but that quickly changes to suspicion as the “training” takes on aspects of a competitive reality show. Soon they discover that the program’s head is actually Merak in disguise, armed with a vague scheme to dominate the solar system with the aid of lots of robots and a Star Trek–style “quantum teleportation” device. They enlist allies and rivals (notably dark-skinned twins Venus and Neptune, who start out mean but ultimately decide to try tennis rather than space travel) to stymie the villain both on Earth and at a secret base on Jupiter’s moon Europa. The informational content closes with a real space tourist’s account of the profound impact of seeing our planet from orbit.
Will likely sell well, as usual—but also as usual, the essays and the storyline are aimed at different audiences. (Informational science fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6630-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gold-plated chain puller for readers in alimentary grades.
In a tale aswirl with potty humor, a young hero plunges into danger to save his town and the world from an evil sewer—er, supervillain.
In days of yore Nitro City was protected from clogs and their nefarious perpetrators by the likes of Drainiac Magee and other costumed members of the Plumbers’ League of UnNaturally Gifted Exceptionals—all of whom were declared outlaws when the Ironwater company took over the job of sewer management. But now a rising tide of mysterious leaks, overflows, and mutant subterranean monsters promises to turn the town’s massively popular annual Burrito Festival into Plumbageddon. Enter 13-year-old Sully Stringfellow, a natural genius with pipes and valves since birth. He’s more or less unfazed by encounters with pop-up washer weasels and a tentacled croctopus, and he’s john-on-the-spot (so to speak) when the time comes to trigger a former supervillain’s gigantic porcelain Death Flush. The ensuing “cyclo-toiletronic swirl” rockets Sully into Nitro City’s Underworld to expose Ironwater’s CEO as archvillain Human Waste. Dazzled to discover that the old “sewer soldiers” of P.L.U.N.G.E. are still around (his own grandpa turns out to be the legendary Midnight Flush), Sully gladly accepts an invitation into the fold as a new apprentice. Sully is depicted on the cover as white, and the rest of the cast appears to be white by default.
A gold-plated chain puller for readers in alimentary grades. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-51000-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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