Readers will find much to enjoy, especially if taken in smaller bites rather than all at once.
Eighteen short tales about witches by some of the wickedest names in fantasy make for a rich anthology.
It is inevitable that a collection like this be uneven, but the overall quality is high, even if the stories occasionally suffer from a sameness despite their deeply varied origins. The writers are simply stellar: Ellen Kushner, Frances Hardinge, Charles de Lint, Tanith Lee, Ellen Klages and Holly Black, among others. Neil Gaiman’s contribution is a witchy, weird poem. Garth Nix’s “A Handful of Ashes” features a library and librarian. Delia Sherman’s “The Witch in the Woods” is beautiful and romantic, with deer and bear shape-shifters and no small darkness. Jim Butcher has a Harry Dresden story (“B is for Bigfoot”), and it’s terrific. Jane Yolen makes Hans Christian Andersen’s life a tale itself, and Patricia McKillip’s “Which Witch” makes loud music and crow magic elegantly. The best, however, may be Peter S. Beagle’s “Great-Grandmother in the Cellar” (yes, she is, and she goes back there, too, but not the way she came, in this "Sleeping Beauty" variant).
Readers will find much to enjoy, especially if taken in smaller bites rather than all at once. (about the authors) (Fantasy anthology. 10 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-86830-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters.
Two young people save the world and all the magic in it in this series opener.
When tall, dark-haired, white-skinned Christopher Forrester goes to stay with his grandfather in Scotland, he ventures to the top of a forbidden hill and discovers astonishing magical creatures. His grandfather explains that Christopher’s family are guardians of the “way through” to the Archipelago, where the Glimourie Tree grows—the source of glimourie, or the world’s magic. Black-haired, olive-skinned Mal Arvorian, a girl from the Archipelago, is being pursued by a murderer, and she asks Christopher for help, launching them both on a wild, dangerous journey to discover why the glimourie is disappearing and how to stop it. Together with a part-nereid woman, a ratatoska, a dragon, and a Berserker, they face an odyssey of dangerous tasks to find the Immortal, the only one who can reverse the draining of magic. Like Lyra and Will from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Mal and Christopher sacrifice their innocence for experience, meeting every challenge with depthless courage until they finally reach the maze at the heart of it all. Rundell throws myriad obstacles in her characters’ way, but she gives them tools both tangible (a casapasaran, which always points the way home, and the glamry blade, which cuts through anything) and intangible (the desire “to protect something worth protecting” and an “insistence that the world is worth loving”). Final art not seen.
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593809860
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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