If not quite the sumptuous banquet anticipated, the novel still makes a satisfying, tasty treat.
From the author of the Dairy Queen series comes this ebullient fairy tale, set in a vaguely Teutonic empire of small baronies, duchies and kingdoms.
Charting the adventures of humble orphans Trudy, a kitchen maid, and Tips, a miller’s son and object of Trudy’s affections, the story’s scope soon broadens to include Princess Wisdom and her grandmother, Benevolence, from the female-led ruling family of Montagne, a small kingdom coveted by larger, wealthier Farina (Princess Ben, 2008). All are nominally subjects of Emperor Rüdiger IV, whose passion is his grand circus. “Told through seven voices” in diaries, letters, encyclopedia entries, self-published family history and a play, the complicated plot unfolds briskly with panache and humor, braiding imperial ambition and marriages of convenience with true love and longing. Trudy yearns for Tips; Tips yearns for Wisdom; Wisdom yearns for the circus; the Duchess of Farina yearns to absorb Montagne. All work out their destinies with gusto and determination (aided or thwarted by witchcraft courtesy of Montagne’s royal family). Only the ending, referencing the story’s fairy-tale provenance, fails to thoroughly satisfy.
If not quite the sumptuous banquet anticipated, the novel still makes a satisfying, tasty treat. (glossary of terms) (Fantasy. 10 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-0547566870
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters.
Two young people save the world and all the magic in it in this series opener.
When tall, dark-haired, white-skinned Christopher Forrester goes to stay with his grandfather in Scotland, he ventures to the top of a forbidden hill and discovers astonishing magical creatures. His grandfather explains that Christopher’s family are guardians of the “way through” to the Archipelago, where the Glimourie Tree grows—the source of glimourie, or the world’s magic. Black-haired, olive-skinned Mal Arvorian, a girl from the Archipelago, is being pursued by a murderer, and she asks Christopher for help, launching them both on a wild, dangerous journey to discover why the glimourie is disappearing and how to stop it. Together with a part-nereid woman, a ratatoska, a dragon, and a Berserker, they face an odyssey of dangerous tasks to find the Immortal, the only one who can reverse the draining of magic. Like Lyra and Will from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Mal and Christopher sacrifice their innocence for experience, meeting every challenge with depthless courage until they finally reach the maze at the heart of it all. Rundell throws myriad obstacles in her characters’ way, but she gives them tools both tangible (a casapasaran, which always points the way home, and the glamry blade, which cuts through anything) and intangible (the desire “to protect something worth protecting” and an “insistence that the world is worth loving”). Final art not seen.
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593809860
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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