DRAGON ON TRIAL

New threats to the existence of a hidden refuge for magical and mythical animals occupy a trio of young sleuths in this droll middle volume.

The tale picks up just after the opener’s cliffhanger ending (The Menagerie, 2013) and likewise ends midcourse with an ominous, sequel-keying discovery. In between Zoe, Logan and their part-merman buddy, Blue, find themselves racing to discover the truth about the apparent murder of Pelly, the thoroughly obnoxious goose whose golden eggs are nonetheless the Menagerie’s sole source of income, and to keep the entire Wyoming facility from being shut down by regulatory agents. Meanwhile the large cast of griffins, hell hounds and other creatures—many with oversized egos, bad dispositions or both—need often hazardous care and feeding: “If you look a basilisk in the eye, it kills you instantly. If you hear a basilisk hiss, it kills you instantly. If you smell a wide-awake basilisk—.” And lest the pace lag for even a moment, the authors also stage a hilarious jury screening for a dragon’s trial-by-peers, trot in a rambunctious family of unregistered shape-changers, engineer encounters between Blue and a preening classmate with a crush, and shoehorn in several other subplots, both new and ongoing. Busy, busy…but funny, funny too, not to mention positively stuffed with exotic fauna. (map) (Fantasy. 10-12)