With its ornate, Regency-esque setting and intricate plot packed with mysterious twists and turns (plus a few serious...
In this sequel to A Pocket Full of Murder (2015), Isaveth’s magical invention having proved vastly profitable for Glow-Mor, the company president rewards her with a scholarship to exclusive Tarreton College, where she excels at Sagery but is snubbed by its aristocratic students.
They resent the admission of a commoner from the Moshite religious sect whose father has advocated Moshite resistance, but two students break rank to befriend Isaveth: a new friend, Eulalie, and her old friend Esmond, younger son of the ailing Sagelord. Esmond needs Isaveth’s help to thwart older brother Eryx’s schemes. Both know Eryx is guilty of murder and has preserved, then hidden, evidence of his misdeeds. Isaveth locates this during a masked ball only to find it’s magically guarded. Her efforts to cook up a spell to disarm Eryx’s protections come to an abrupt end when she’s falsely accused of stealing a diamond necklace and suspended from school, which also threatens Glow-Mor. A secret agenda’s at work. But whose, and for what purpose? To seize Isaveth’s invention? To clear Eryx’s path to power? Anderson’s alternate world features characters of multiple skin colors (Isaveth is olive-skinned; Eulalie has brown skin), but race plays no importance in assigning status; this universe is divided by politics and class.
With its ornate, Regency-esque setting and intricate plot packed with mysterious twists and turns (plus a few serious themes), this sequel is part melodrama, part comedy, and all-around good fun. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3774-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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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