No genre trope is left in the basket, making the result more a crazy quilt than a free-standing series opener.
This admixture of suspicious deaths, ghosts, shifting realities, weird science, teen issues, family issues, secret organizations and unexplained events in a British town will all, no doubt, come clear in future episodes.
As the story opens, Michael suddenly develops the ability to read a suicidal dog’s intentions and teleport himself a short distance to rescue it. After this remarkable occurrence, he is forcibly inducted into a group called UNexplained Incidents, Cryptic Occurrences, Relative Nontemporal Events by the sinister, inhumanly strong Amadeus Klimt and his hot, surly, butt-kicking assistant Chantelle. Learning that he can alter events by “imagineering” himself into alternate universes, Michael squeaks past multiple murder attempts while stumbling through a nightmarish mystery. This involves moody goth schoolmate Freya and Rafferty, the killed (but not gone, thanks to “cellular memory”) former owner of both the dog and Freya’s transplanted heart. For comic relief, d’Lacey adds a younger but smarter sister to expedite Michael’s relations with the opposite sex. He also chucks in strange revelations about their long-missing father, a luridly icky science lab scene, dragons, unicorns, UFOs (possibly), a melodramatic climax featuring literal cliffhanging and several encounters with dead teens.
No genre trope is left in the basket, making the result more a crazy quilt than a free-standing series opener. (Fantasy/science fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-60876-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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 sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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