A mostly satisfying return.
Twinned expeditions into the northern woods drive this third installment in The Misewa Saga.
When last readers saw Cree teen Morgan, she had just woken up next to Eli under the Great Tree that is their portal from their foster parents’ Winnipeg attic into the magical land of Askí. The colossal footprints that lead from her foster brother’s unresponsive body can only mean that the giant Mistapew has stolen Eli’s soul, and it’s up to Morgan to get it back. Soon Morgan and the squirrel Arik are trudging north with Eli’s inert body on a sled. They are accompanied by a White girl named Emily, a new school friend whom Morgan’s hastily brought through the portal to help (and who becomes something more than friend as they go). This journey is mirrored by a subsequent trip north on Earth so that Morgan can meet her kókom, the old woman who’s now her only surviving biological forbear. The shift from race-against-time fantasy adventure to a more mundane car excursion may throw readers, but Morgan’s grief at the newfound loss of the mother she’d been taken from years ago forms a unifying throughline. Robertson (Norway House Cree Nation) has a lot of narrative balls in the air in this outing, and they don’t all stay there—in particular, the time-travel mechanism becomes quite convoluted—but the story’s emotional arc shines true.
A mostly satisfying return. (map, glossary) (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7352-6616-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Puffin/Tundra Book Group
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when...
Two sisters make an unauthorized expedition to their former hometown and in the process bring together the two parts of their divided family.
Dooley packs plenty of emotion into this eventful road trip, which takes place over the course of less than 24 hours. Twelve-year-old Ophelia, nicknamed Fella, and her 16-year-old sister, Zoey Grace, aka Zany, are the daughters of a lesbian couple, Shannon and Lacy, who could not legally marry. The two white girls squabble and share memories as they travel from West Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina, where Zany is determined to scatter Mama Lacy’s ashes in accordance with her wishes. The year is 2004, before the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, and the girls have been separated by hostile, antediluvian custodial laws. Fella’s present-tense narration paints pictures not just of the difficulties they face on the trip (a snowstorm, car trouble, and an unlikely thief among them), but also of their lives before Mama Lacy’s illness and of the ways that things have changed since then. Breathless and engaging, Fella’s distinctive voice is convincingly childlike. The conversations she has with her sister, as well as her insights about their relationship, likewise ring true. While the girls face serious issues, amusing details and the caring adults in their lives keep the tone relatively light.
Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when Fella’s family figures out how to come together in a new way . (Historical fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-16504-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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