SHIPWRECK ISLAND

A hoped-for refuge becomes anything but for two tween fugitives in this muddled middle volume.

Somehow surviving a three-month voyage on a makeshift raft over a flooded world, Ellie and Seth make landfall at last just in time to be swept up in a power struggle between a lonely young queen and a smooth-talking aristocrat. Worse yet, the afflictions met in the previous episode have followed them—Seth, a reborn god of the sea, remains tortured by ghostly voices and fragmentary memories, while Ellie is both saddled with a malign spirit insistently pressuring her to make evil choices and dogged by a crazed Inquisitor obsessed with literally burning that spirit out of her. With all this, it’s no surprise that Murray’s efforts to lighten the load with a new ally’s pet kitten or comedic touches like giving Ellie a real gift for saying the wrong thing will likely fall flat for readers, as will the local queen’s startlingly sudden shift at the climax from friendly but overwhelmed adolescent to brutally pragmatic monarch. Not to mention an island setting that, obligatory map notwithstanding, becomes small enough to get around in no time depending on the plot’s twists and turns, continuity breaks that have characters suddenly rearranged or apparently endowed with more than two hands, and a head-scratcher of a closing scene. The island’s population reads largely White.

A shambolic, patchwork jumble.