KIRKUS REVIEW
Can Oona meet the challenges of the Magician’s Tower?
Three months after 13-year-old Natural Magician Oona Crate’s last mysterious and magical adventure (The Wizard of Dark Street, 2011), the time has come for the Magician’s Tower Competition. Every five years, a new tower is built along Dark Street, the only conduit between Faerie and New York City, with new challenges, physical and mental, installed on each floor. Contestants compete through four days of elimination challenges in hopes of reaching the final challenge: a puzzle box no one has solved in the 500 years the contest has been running. Oona sets aside her Wizard’s apprentice duties to compete against her old acquaintances and rivals Adler and Isadora Iree and Roderick Rutherford, among others. Can she beat them and reach her goal or will she be distracted by the mystery of the missing punch bowl? Odyssey’s sequel suffers from many of the same problems as its predecessor. Though it is set in 1877, the historical setting is given nary a nod. The characters don't rise above clichés, and each has one characteristic trait that quickly grows old. The flabby prose teems with detail but pays little attention to it once it is introduced.
Oona’s back story has a mystery or two left; sequels will likely follow and hopefully improve. (Fantasy. 9-11)
