A brave adventure with meaningful depth.
Paola battles the supernatural to save her friend in this follow-up to 2021’s Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares.
Dante, one of Pao’s best friends, has been missing for 8 months: He’s trapped in the void, a place full of terrible creatures and dread, and she’s desperate to rescue him. But Mexican American Pao may be suffering from PTSD, and the adults in her life want her to stay home and play it safe. Frustrated, Pao and Emma, her other best friend, take matters into their own hands, brewing up a tea intended to restore Pao’s magical dreams of the void. It works—and Pao realizes she must travel to San Antonio, Texas, as soon as possible if she hopes to save Dante. To get there, she tags along with Emma’s new friends from the Rainbow Rogues, who are going on an environmental conservation volunteer trip to New Orleans. The bus journey from Arizona soon takes a dark turn, triggering a thrilling, fast-paced series of events that force Pao to confront El Cucuy, the lord of nightmares, and his apocalyptic plot as well as to learn to ask for help. While love is often depicted as the means to individually defeat evil, this story conveys a resonant message about the power of broader community support. As she battles monsters, Pao also privately explores her sexual identity and romantic feelings for Emma, who is queer.
A brave adventure with meaningful depth. (Fantasy. 8-13)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-368-07687-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Rick Riordan Presents/Disney
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Ponderous and protracted, with more work needed on both the world and the characters.
Two young teens with special powers face an ancient evil rising from the very heart of the Tinvali Empire in this doorstopping series opener.
Pursued by ruthless agents eager to exploit her mysterious ability to read peoples’ true feelings, Arden—eventually, after many chapters alternating between dual narrators—links up with foundling Mako, a budding music mage who’s carefully hiding the fact that he’s invited an invisible smooth-talking trickster spirit named Narrix to be his lifelong guardian. It seems that some of Narrix’s fellow spirits may be even nastier—and there are ominous hints that they might be sneaking back into the world. Several of Arden’s adventures do more to bulk up the page count than advance the plot in any meaningful way, and though (like many of Mull’s protagonists) she’s a dab hand at snarky banter, she otherwise comes off as a rather wooden character. Readers may find Mako’s journey and conflicts more absorbing, as he struggles to balance the joy of blossoming into an outstanding warrior under Narrix’s tutelage with the sneaking suspicion he’s made a bad choice of tutor. Whether his concerns are valid or not remains to be seen. The leads present white.
Ponderous and protracted, with more work needed on both the world and the characters. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780593712047
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Labyrinth Road
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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