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MEASLE AND THE MALLOCKEE by Ian Ogilvy

MEASLE AND THE MALLOCKEE

by Ian Ogilvy

Pub Date: Jan. 1st, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-058691-5
Publisher: HarperCollins

Jumping once again aboard the Potterwagon, Ogilvy pits his resourceful preteen muggle against a cabal of Warlocks who have secretly taken over the Wizard’s Guild. Seeing his magic-working parents seized on trumped-up charges stemming from the previous adventure, Measle escapes, along with his doughty terrier Tinker and his baby sister Tilly—the tale’s “Mallockee,” meaning that she’s an immensely powerful Wizard—with the help of supposed friend Toby Jugg, another Wizard. But Jugg is really a Warlock in disguise, and after narrowly avoiding several messy ends, Measle finds himself locked in the Guild’s high-tech dungeon, with only Iggy, a sullen and mush-brained Wrathmonk (i.e., minor Wizard-gone-to-seed) and Tinker for allies. The author endows Measle with a healthy measure of smarts, expertly exploits the comic potentials of Iggy’s attitude and of Tilly’s loose-cannon tendency to work spells when she’s unhappy and winds the tale up with an ingenious twist—so, though the villains continue to be cardboard figures, third time’s the charm for this derivative but developing series. (Fantasy. 10-12)