Unusual and excellent, containing wonder within.
An eerie graphic novel slides from apparent historical fiction into an unsettling fairy tale.
Larson and Mock open this story with a kiss, as Elber, just returning to Gypsum, Oklahoma, from fighting in World War I, proposes to hometown girl Amelia. Elber’s youngest sister, Vonceil, 11, watches in envy and disgust: Until Elber left two years ago, she had been his favorite companion. At the hastily arranged wedding, volatile Great-Uncle Dell accuses Amelia of being the white witch who killed his brother Jesse nearly 70 years earlier. Not long after these events, a mysterious woman dressed in white comes to town, accuses Elber of abandoning her in France, and magically turns the farm’s fresh spring to salt water. Vonceil goes to Great-Uncle Dell for help, and he tells her a strange story that parallels an adventure that Vonceil then has with a sugar witch. After that, the story gets complicated. The tension between fully grounded reality (e.g., the Sears house the family built) and wild fantasy (e.g., the witch’s fetes) pulls the tale in opposite directions, but somehow Vonceil’s pragmatism and Larson’s clean writing keep the thread from breaking. Mock’s full-color illustrations portray mood and atmosphere extremely effectively through novel page layouts and kaleidoscopic points of view. Characters read as White.
Unusual and excellent, containing wonder within. (Graphic fantasy. 10-16)Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4620-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
A spectacular return to a magical world.
Following the events of Impossible Creatures (2024), a devoted Guardian teams up with a brave princess to fight her power-hungry uncle and save the Archipelago’s dragons from a strange new threat.
Jacques the dragon summons Christopher Forrester back to the Archipelago from the human world: Dragons are dying, and no one knows why. Meanwhile, on the island of Dousha, Princess Anya’s grandfather, King Halam, has been murdered, and her father accused—though she knows he’s innocent. When Christopher and Anya take refuge on the islet of Glimt, the Berserker Nighthand helps them see how their twin missions to save the dragons and free Anya’s father are connected. They work together to create an antidote for the poison that’s killing the dragons and to keep Anya and her father safe from her murderous uncle. Meanwhile, Nighthand and Irian, the part-nereid ocean scholar, pursue their own important secret mission. Divided into three parts—“Castle,” “Dragons,” and “Revenge”—and containing elements of fairy tales, fantasy, and Shakespeare, this story continues the storyline established in the series opener, yet because it introduces new characters and obstacles, it could also stand alone. Dark-blond Anya (“five feet tall and all of it claws”) is a match for white-presenting Christopher, who, though he still misses Mal, finds that “it made a difference to have someone to move through the world with again. A friend changed the feel of the universe.” Mackenzie’s delicate, otherworldly art adorns the text.
A spectacular return to a magical world. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-15)Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593809907
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
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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