A long slog to the good parts. Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series for adults offers a similar premise (with dragons rather than...
Falkner gives Napoleon a toothy secret weapon in this decidedly alternate history.
It seems that Europe’s surviving saurs are, with but rare exceptions, small and harmless. Not so the ravening monsters still extant in the mysterious Amerigo Islands across the sea—a circumstance that Bonaparte exploits upon his return from exile with a corps of dino-mounted cavalry that makes all the difference at Waterloo. Rather than exploit the melodramatic possibilities of this premise, though, the author chooses to bury them in a slowly developing adventure centering on Willem, a Flemish lad with a yen to be a stage magician like his vanished father and a knack for hypnotizing the local reptiles that also, it turns out, works on Napoleon’s beasts. The whole battle itself is confined to two localized scenes. Falkner cranks up the pace in the late going while adding such juicy bits as a hunt for a ring through piles of severed limbs and a climactic chase through Antwerp’s rousingly feculent sewers. Unfortunately, readers will first have to wade through eye-glazing accounts of Willem’s earlier years, changing relationships with neighbors and friends, and the patterns of Walloon village life with only occasional glimpses of a larger picture. The episode ends with Willem escaping to England beneath the triumphant Napoleon’s very nose in hopes that his secret can turn the tide.
A long slog to the good parts. Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series for adults offers a similar premise (with dragons rather than dinos) and quicker rewards. (Historical fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: July 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-30075-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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