A thoughtful fantasy exploring loyalty, self-worth, and the ethics of war beyond the battlefield.
Can a disabled princess and her gender-nonconforming squire make a difference to their country’s war efforts?
Twelve-year-old Princess Adelisa, who goes by “Ash,” uses a cane and braces due to her easily dislocated joints. After six years away at school, she’s returned to Calinor, where discontented nobles—and her older brother, Crown Prince Lucen—dismiss her as “crippled” and “damaged.” Twelve-year-old Splinter, who uses she/her pronouns and is neither a girl nor a boy, longs to be a squire, despite custom restricting this role to boys. When her bravery and sense of justice impress Ash, Ash sponsors Splinter as her squire and companion, but bullying from other squires, especially Lucen, makes Splinter’s quest challenging. On the day Lucen’s actions get Splinter ejected from the squires, Ash is kidnapped. Splinter—and a guilty Lucen—go in pursuit. Nijkamp illustrates the price of betrayal in many forms. Nobles, unhappy with the queen’s more equitable policies, aggravate the war with the Ferisian Empire by betraying Calinor for promises of power. Ash and Splinter, while spying for Calinor to unmask traitorous nobles, agonize over necessarily betraying friends and helpers in the process, and Lucen betrays his sister’s trust. The characters all have depth and flaws and believably grow into stronger versions of their true selves who value their own self-worth. The limited worldbuilding may be addressed in sequels. Major characters are cued white.
A thoughtful fantasy exploring loyalty, self-worth, and the ethics of war beyond the battlefield. (map) (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780063326262
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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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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