This delightful series opener is an exciting blend of Russian and Jewish traditions
A Jewish girl meets dragons in a fantastical version of Kievan Rus’, where magic has been illegal for 10 years.
Anya’s the only Jewish child in Zmeyreka. In the mostly Christian 10th-century village, Anya’s family stands out: Her father’s father remains pagan, while her mother’s people are refugee Khazars and Mountain Jews. But unbeknownst to Anya, her village is not like the rest of Kievan Rus’. Magical creatures are nearly extinct everywhere else but common in Zmeyreka. The tsar’s sent a “fool family”—users of fool magic, authorized to use magic despite the ban—to capture the last dragon in the land. The youngest fool is Anya’s age (he’s named Ivan, just like his seven older brothers), and the two become fast friends. But can Anya really bring herself to help Ivan kill a dragon that hasn’t harmed anyone? Zmeyreka’s magical creatures are both helpful and frightening; there are dragons, leshiye, vodyaniye, and even a Jewish domovoi with a little kippah. Ivan, unlike his pale father and brothers, is dark-skinned like his mother, a princess from “far to the east.” Though historical accuracy isn’t perfect (Anya anticipates her bat mitzvah, for instance, and reads Hebrew), it is a fantasy, and anachronisms don’t detract from the adventures of truly likable characters in this original setting.
This delightful series opener is an exciting blend of Russian and Jewish traditions . (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-358-00607-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Versify/HMH
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A high-energy romp, occasionally a bit labored but still chock-full of hilarity.
A move from lumber camp into town only adds new hazards to older ones for a loose-lipped young, white Michigander and his recently divorced mom.
As in My Near-Death Adventures (99% True!) (2015), DeCamp tells two stories simultaneously—because, as one of the most clueless narrators ever, 11-year-old Stanley Slater constructs a personal reality at odds with what’s actually going on around him. On the one hand, he’s absorbed with the trials of keeping a laid-up neighbor’s motor-mouthed 7-year-old son alive and reasonably clean, defending himself from his scary cousin Geri and schoolmate Mad Madge, and preventing his mother from marrying rich but hateful suitor Archibald Crutchley. And then there’s his long-absent, thoroughly idealized father. Beneath these surface events, though, are telling glimpses of more complex doings: his mom is pulled between the safety marriage to Crutchley would bring and her love for steady-minded lumberjack Stinky Pete; Geri barely pulls through a serious illness; and Stan’s dad turns out to be a charming but thoroughly rotten egg. Stan’s utter inability to keep from blurting out his frank opinions was funny in the previous episode but seems overused here. Still, it makes for plenty of comical exchanges, and along with adding historical atmosphere, the sheaves of actual 19th-century advertisements and photos he collects and annotates further lighten the tone.
A high-energy romp, occasionally a bit labored but still chock-full of hilarity. (Historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-39048-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A comfortably formulaic woodland epic finds resolution in widespread slaughter and melodramatic flourishes.
The (literally) heartless queen of the Unseelie Court meets her thoroughly deserved fate at last at the hands of some of the forest’s humblest residents in this trilogy closer.
Starting up where the middle volume, Dark Waters of Hagwood (2013), left off, it’s one battle or act of cruelty after another as Rhiannon Rigantona—not a pasta dish but the deathless and utterly evil faerie queen—pursues her violent ends. She not only makes war on Hagwood’s diminutive werlings, doughty if gooey sluglungs, and all forest creatures in general, but brutally slaughters her own Hollow Hill subjects, loyal and otherwise, as prelude to a campaign of worldwide subjugation. As she works her depredations aboveground (“How the gore doth pump and fount,” hoots a minion), Jarvis sends werling Gamaliel Tumpin and sidekicks with equally homely monickers far below for fresh charges of prophecy and purpose in preparation for a climactic showdown atop appropriately named Witch’s Leap. As it turns out, opening the magically sealed casket that preserves Rigantona’s heart and invulnerability requires a final, ultimate sacrifice. The author gets there smartly while adding a “haggish host” of lightning-wielding troll witches mounted on giant boars to a teeming cast already notable for its wild diversity of goblins, spriggans, wyrms, and other species (many of which are depicted in warty detail at the chapter heads).
A comfortably formulaic woodland epic finds resolution in widespread slaughter and melodramatic flourishes. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9922-7
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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