A traumatic childhood experience that culminated with her grandfather’s mysterious disappearance and presumed death has made 15-year-old Maddie Palmer a prisoner of her house. Unable to leave her domicile, Maddie, “a towering mountain of a girl” with “a big boulder of a face” has spent the last 13 years indoors. Her window on the world is her younger brother Keith, who nightly gives her a blow-by-blow account of everything that he has seen, heard, and read since he left the house that morning. Both of their lives change forever when Keith is selected to be an apprentice in the gloomy Tower Library, run by the powerful and wily Mr. Lexeter. The things Keith, who Maddie calls “Eyes and Ears,” tells her about Mr. Lexeter and the Tower Library begin to erode the banks of Maddie’s repressed memory, and she commences an investigation into the sinister and Kafka-esque institution. Once Maddie begins to regain her memory, leaves her house, and instigates a battle with the evil Mr. Lexeter, the story changes focus, losing the otherworldly dreamlike quality that sustained it. What was mysterious and surreal in the world of Maddie’s mind becomes both harder to swallow and less compelling in the context of the still nightmarishly bizarre but now more grounded action-adventure story. Still, newcomer Bloor’s ideas are strong and his descriptive powers—which are so sharp that the reader can practically see, hear, and smell the contours of his imaginary world—keeps the material lively and thought-provoking throughout. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8037-2687-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
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
A rich, enthralling historical mystery that engages and educates.
Siblings decode familial and wartime secrets in 1940 England.
Headstrong 14-year-old Lizzie Novis refuses to believe that her mother, a U.S. embassy clerk who was working in Poland, is dead. After fleeing from her grandmother—who’s attempting to bring her back to America—Lizzie locates her 19-year-old brother, Jakob, a Cambridge mathematician who’s stationed at the clandestine British intelligence site called Bletchley Park. Hiding from her grandmother’s estate steward, Lizzie becomes a messenger at Bletchley Park, ferrying letters across the grounds while Jakob attempts to both break the ciphers generated by the German Enigma machines and help his sister face the reality of their mother’s likely fate. With a suspicious MI5 agent inquiring about Mum and clues and codes piling up, the siblings, whose late father was “Polish Jewish British,” eventually decipher the truth. Shared narrative duties between the siblings effectively juxtapose the measured Jakob with the spirited Lizzie. Lizzie’s directness is repeatedly attributed to her being “half American,” which proves tiresome, but Jakob’s development from reserved to risk-tolerant provides welcome nuance. The authors introduce and carefully explain a variety of decoding methodologies, inspiring readers to attempt their own. A thoughtful and entertaining historical note identifies the key figures who appear in the book, such as Alan Turing, as well as the real-life bases for the fictional characters. Interspersed photos and images of ephemera help situate the narrative’s time period.
A rich, enthralling historical mystery that engages and educates. (Historical mystery. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780593527542
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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