THE TIDE KNOT

Often sequels are not as powerful as the original, but this sequel to Ingo (2006), a British fantasy import, seems, at times, to be far more gripping than its franchise leader, with tense plot points cooled by more temperate but compelling plot points. Sapphire and her brother Conor have long suspected that their father didn’t simply disappear. They thought he answered the call of Ingo, an undersea world populated by Mer folk. The siblings struggle with their loss and the search for answers but also their own identities as part Mer and part human. That conflict aside, a certain force in Ingo, the Tide Knot, a system wherein the tides of the world rush in but return in an organized structure, decides to will itself undone. This promises certain death and damage to the seaside community Sapphire inhabits with her family. The fantastic journey undertaken by both teenagers reveals them as worthy heroes in a promising adventure in a foreign land (and sea). (Fiction. 10-14)