UPROOTED HOMEKIN

Hu’s debut fantasy novel follows a boy as he gradually adjusts to the strange new world he finds himself in.

Fralith, feeling abandoned, jumps through a mysterious portal. Though he’d meant to go elsewhere in his fantastical realm of Arourvaa, the 12-seasons-old boy winds up somewhere he simply doesn’t recognize: present day Earth. He doesn’t hesitate to intervene when he spots a man threatening a girl and another boy, and he is injured after fighting off the assailant with his knife. Fralith awakens in a hospital where he doesn’t understand anything—the food, the equipment, or the language. He warms up to Tim, a patient nurse who teaches him about this “OtherWorld.” The boy later stays with an obliging family and has a chance to reunite with the girl and boy he saved. All the while, he has dreams and memories of SecondHome, where his beloved older brother, believing Fralith had betrayed their father, left him alone. The boy grows quite fond of the family that’s taken him in; is he willing to leave them to return to his “broken” blood family? Hu develops a truly fascinating protagonist. Readers will initially be as confused as Fralith as he struggles to make sense of this foreign world (other characters’ use of the English language, which is “gibberish” to Fralith, clarifies his particular circumstances). Scenes of the boy assimilating shine; he speaks another language, but his thoughts (rendered in English in the text) reveal all that he’s trying to grasp while sounding out certain words (chock-o-let) or coining his own terms in his head (he comes to like the fruit he calls YellowCurve: “Ohhh, I have to peel it first. I should have guessed”). At the same time, there are welcome touches detailing Fralith’s life back in SecondHome, and his visions illuminate some of what happened with his father and estranged brother. The novel’s latter half leads to a suspenseful turn as Fralith is torn between going home or making this place his new world.

An engaging portrayal of an out-of-place youth that showcases the beauty of language.