Another absorbing fairy-tale adventure.
Filomena and her friends’ latest quest gets derailed by Robin Hood and his thievery.
Filomena Jefferson-Cho and her three best friends, Jack the Giant Stalker, Alistair, and Gretel, are on their way to Snow Country to offer their aid in finding a lost fairy. Their quest gets derailed when Robin Hood steals their belongings. Princess Jeanne of Northphalia enlists their help in retrieving the crown he stole from her as well. After rescuing Lord Sharif of Nottingham from Robin Hood, they discover that King Richard the Lionhearted is trying to steal the throne from the princess—and he needs the crown to make it official. Things get worse: In Eastphalia, Prince Charlie has turned into a frog, and even true love’s kiss won’t undo the curse. Meanwhile, back in the mortal world, Filomena’s adoptive mother has come down with a mysterious illness, and Filomena must return to her. Along the way, new friends join the quartet, and together they attempt to find the League of Seven who can save them all. This third series installment offers more action-filled heroic quests centering realistically drawn tween characters. Alongside the magical fun there is emotional depth as Filomena and Jack struggle with acting courageously and also allowing themselves to share their true feelings of fear, loneliness, and helplessness. The world of Never After is full of ethnically and racially diverse characters.
Another absorbing fairy-tale adventure. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-82725-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
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A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes.
Eleven-year-old Georgie sets out to the rescue after seeing his dad snatched into thin air by a hideous figure.
In a confusing debut that reads like a first draft, the kidnapping impels the young slingshot expert to go from doggedly enduring vicious bullying at school to intrepidly plunging after his father through a portal to Scatterplot, an otherworldly realm where the memories of everyone in New York are uploaded by omnilingual Scribes. Classmates Apurva Aluwhalia (who’s cued South Asian) and Roscoe Harris (who reads Black and is confined to a role that’s largely limited to comic relief), each motivated by their own concerns, follow white-presenting Georgie on his adventure. In Scatterplot, they must remain alert for the “tribe” of “bad people” called Altercockers, formed by the exiled Rollie D. Meanwhile, Flint Eldritch, the menacing figure who was responsible for Georgie’s father’s disappearance, is bent on using the Aetherquill, a magical pen that can rewrite reality in unpredictable ways, to replace all those recorded memories with fake ones. In a story that’s marred by stilted dialogue, flat characterization, and awkward turns of phrase, Georgie and his friends, along with Scatterplot siblings Edie and Ore, embark on a quest to save both his father and the entire realm. The puss-oozing, misshapen villain Flint, crawling with bugs, does at least provide a memorably lurid element of horror. The novel ends with an abrupt cliffhanger.
A half-baked jumble of poorly connected themes, incidents, and tropes. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798886453164
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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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