A deft twist on familiar source material and a tween hero’s relatable struggle with destiny.
A young mage sees his family enslaved and joins King Arthur’s fight against evil.
In this dynamic fantasy series opener for middle-grade readers, Mordred of Arthurian legend is recast as the sinister king of northern Britain. He decrees that all “ordinarius,” or nonmagical, families will be sold into slavery and their goods and property forfeited. Those with magic will be forced to join Mordred’s mages in his upcoming war against King Arthur in the south. Villager Pip Gwynhoed, 12, is the only one in his family with magical abilities. He wants to stay with his relatives, but when they are separated on the auction block—realistically depicted—Pip loses control of his untrained gift. Drawn to Pip’s raw power, Merlin appears, takes him as his apprentice, and buys the boy’s mother and sister, freeing them all for a perilous journey to join Arthur in advance of Mordred’s forces. When Pip’s mother and sister are brutally taken by bandits along the way, the tween’s desperate attempt to find them threatens his own life. With vivid scene-setting, McCauley expertly draws readers into a perilous, sometimes ruthless world as experienced through the eyes of a boy consumed by guilt and grief over his family’s plight and the uncertainty about who he is becoming. Pip is haunted by ravens that twist “in the sky, their wings nearly blacking out the pale winter sun.” He sees Arthur’s “massive hill fortress” with wooden battlements reaching “like fingers into the sky.” It may be a predictable trope that Pip is seemingly central to a prophecy—he does, after all, carry a powerful runestone passed down from his magus grandfather—but there is no loss of authenticity in the protagonist’s character development. Pip’s struggle to rise above his personal anguish to fight for all who suffer under wicked Mordred’s cruelty rings true. But the author ups the stakes and sets the stage for the sequel when it appears that Pip may pay a high price for Arthur’s solution to preventing others from seizing magical power.
A deft twist on familiar source material and a tween hero’s relatable struggle with destiny.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-951069-16-2
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Celtic Sea, LLC
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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