Lots of fun, packing both wacky humor and meaningful plot movement.
In this sequel to A Problematic Paradox (2018), even superscience schools have field trips!
In between explosively rigorous pop quizzes and mad science hijinks, Nikola gets to go on not one but two of the very special school’s rare field trips. One sends the students in her electronic-combat class to the Ozarks to track down a suspected parahuman and invite them to the school. The other, for urban-camouflage class, is to practice blending in at a mall. These out-of-school adventures open up opportunities for deepening the lore of the worldbuilding and introduce the idea of a horrific new antagonist. They also allow the text to broach uncomfortable (in a good way) discussions on sources of privilege and murky loyalties, both artfully enough to avoid bogging down the action-oriented plots—which introduce new friends and foes and extensively progress storylines left over from the first book (namely, the fate of Nikola’s father and the identity of the traitor at the school). Some of the best humor comes through educational moments, and only occasionally do the wry jokes tread too deeply into far less effective, too-edgy territory. While the nonhuman characters (Old Ones and parahumans) outnumber ordinary humans, human characters tend to lack racial descriptors, seemingly defaulting to white. The well-developed denouement provides solid closure while plot tentacles set up the next story.
Lots of fun, packing both wacky humor and meaningful plot movement. (Science fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-3848-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes.
Eleven-year-old Georgie sets out to the rescue after seeing his dad snatched into thin air by a hideous figure.
In a confusing debut that reads like a first draft, the kidnapping impels the young slingshot expert to go from doggedly enduring vicious bullying at school to intrepidly plunging after his father through a portal to Scatterplot, an otherworldly realm where the memories of everyone in New York are uploaded by omnilingual Scribes. Classmates Apurva Aluwhalia (who’s cued South Asian) and Roscoe Harris (who reads Black and is confined to a role that’s largely limited to comic relief), each motivated by their own concerns, follow white-presenting Georgie on his adventure. In Scatterplot, they must remain alert for the “tribe” of “bad people” called Altercockers, formed by the exiled Rollie D. Meanwhile, Flint Eldritch, the menacing figure who was responsible for Georgie’s father’s disappearance, is bent on using the Aetherquill, a magical pen that can rewrite reality in unpredictable ways, to replace all those recorded memories with fake ones. In a story that’s marred by stilted dialogue, flat characterization, and awkward turns of phrase, Georgie and his friends, along with Scatterplot siblings Edie and Ore, embark on a quest to save both his father and the entire realm. The puss-oozing, misshapen villain Flint, crawling with bugs, does at least provide a memorably lurid element of horror. The novel ends with an abrupt cliffhanger.
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798886453164
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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
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