BEATRICE AT BAY

In this sequel to Beatrice and the Basilisk (2012), a Texas teenager must protect herself and her family from dark forces who aim to take advantage of her magical abilities.

As a new high school freshman, Beatrice McIlvaine has relatively few worries—that is, until she slays a dragonlike creature that threatens the town of Seabrook, near the Gulf of Mexico. After saving her family and the townsfolk from a basilisk, her life temporarily returns to normal. But then a van full of mysterious teenagers appears, and their leader is fully aware of Beatrice’s ability to “dream things so strong they really happen.” The group reveals that they’re escaping from a brutal headmaster who kept them in a top-secret government-run academy (“a school that’s more like a prison”) for people with special talents. They demand Beatrice’s help, and after she refuses, she’s abducted by the headmaster himself, who threatens to harm Beatrice’s mother unless she helps him track down the runaway students. Beatrice manages to escape and join the ex-pupils on their quest to stop the headmaster’s evil plan to eliminate millions of people as part of a “Real life Thanos conspiracy”—a reference to real-life Marvel superhero films. In order to protect her new friends and the rest of the world, she must learn to fully unleash her own superpowers. Over the course of this sequel, father-daughter writing duo Bruce McCandless and Carson McCandless continue to make Beatrice a compelling lead character. As the plot unfolds, she brings her trademark snark to nearly every scene as she confronts the challenges of coming-of-age as well as a traumatic loss. Each short, accessible chapter drives readers along at a breakneck pace—that is, until the story’s rather abrupt conclusion, which will leave readers hungry for more. Indeed, one may wish that there were more opportunities to develop the runaway-student characters—Mila, Lester, Victor, Chantel, and Sanjay—but there may be more time to do so in a future installment.

An often thrilling and nuanced fantasy novella.