MAGGIE AND THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT

In Snoad’s middle-grade fantasy debut, a troubled girl joins a secret organization charged with protecting the Earth from otherworldly incursions.

Twelve-year-old student Margaret “Maggie” Elizabeth Thatcher is named after two powerful women—the former queen of England and one of its former prime ministers. Maggie herself, however, feels anything but formidable. Her life-threatening food allergies limit what she can eat, and her brain compulsively fixates on everything that might go wrong in life. It is only with the help of her best friend, New Zealand–born Anahira Waititi, that Maggie can cope with everyday challenges—let alone the more arduous activities of the Wayfinder Girls apocalypse training camp. Maggie would be naturally inclined to find the camp scary, but she is particularly unsettled when she spots a green-skinned person looking down at her from a nearby tree. Maggie and Anahira are invited by camp leader Lady Marie Studfall to join the Guardians, a clandestine unit whose job it is to send alien intruders back to their own worlds. Maggie isn’t sure she truly belongs in the Guardians, but when she accidentally strikes a bargain with two sports-loving Fae called Tylwyth and Teg (“I couldn’t quite match creatures of Faerie with football fandom, but it was just my luck to get landed with both”), suddenly the fate of two worlds hangs in the balance. The author tells Maggie’s story through straightforward, effective prose and dialogue. Maggie is, in large part, defined by what her mum refers to as her “special needs,” but this emphasis serves less to pigeonhole her than to emphasize how all-consuming such requirements can be. Maggie is a very real protagonist, plagued by self-doubt yet quietly determined and generous of spirit. The story moves quickly despite plenty of exposition and little detail omitted. The Fae duo, though representative of dark forces, are played for light comedy. A handful of full-page black-and-white illustrations serve to emphasize the fantasy element and the scale of Maggie’s trials. She and her fellow Guardians should garner plenty of fans.

A fun, fast-moving adventure with plenty to say about courage, friendship, and responsibility.