A grim, gruesome, overly ambitious jumble.
A blacksmith’s apprentice and a sword-wielding princess unite to defend their conquered people against periodic plagues of murderous monsters.
Having endured a reign of terror for centuries, thanks to hordes of murderous monsters released at unpredictable intervals by high-tech conquerors the Elduari, the people of Varen have split into cowed appeasers and surreptitious rebels. Among the latter is young Argo, who’s fretting at signs that another Release is imminent, and his chance-met ally, Ana, who’s bent on revenge against those who killed her little sister. The rebels have not only the super-powered Elduari and their vicious creations to battle but also their own people, many of whom are too frightened to resist or are actually secret spies bearing futuristic surveillance gear. Bachmann must therefore resort to unlikely contortions to keep his protagonists alive, first through multiple battles with overwhelmingly powerful foes, and then, in a ham-fisted effort to complicate the moral landscape, a climactic confrontation with the Elduari king, who offers a thoroughly unconvincing justification for the centuries of slaughter before making way for a tidily simplistic resolution. Still, from the eldritch masked Elduari and their terrifying minions to his depictions of hideous transformations and gory murder sprees, the author does show a knack for creating gut-wrenching horrors. Readers with properly strong stomachs may be inclined to forgive the contrivances. The cast reads white.
A grim, gruesome, overly ambitious jumble. (map) (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780063210394
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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
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
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