WILD MAGIC

After five sparkling initial chapters, this Pied Piper retelling takes a sudden dive in quality and seems to switch genres. The opening scene features blissfully enchanted children dancing through Hamelin, trailing the Pied Piper away from their town forever. He leads them under Hamelin Hill and out the other side into Elvendale, an idyllic landscape of lush meadows and cozy farms, populated by “tall, handsome people…with long, flowing hair, bright eyes, and a stealthy, catlike grace to their movements.” The Piper is such an elf, but cursed for centuries for killing a stag in a forbidden forest: Each full moon, he bleeds afresh from a long-healed thigh wound and morphs into a bloodthirsty Beast. He steals Hamelin’s children in the hopes of passing his curse along to an unknown special child with elven powers—Marianne or crippled brother Jakob, who are unknowingly half-elf. Weatherill’s prose is warm and appealing on the Pied Piper arc, but her elven magic and curses vary between clichéd and too random, rendering the overall piece forgettable. A shame. (Fantasy. 8-10)