MADDIGAN’S FANTASIA
by Margaret Mahy
A feisty circus girl and two alien boys embark on a perilous quest to save a failing city in this fantastical futurist adventure. Proud she’s a “true-born Maddigan,” 12-year-old Garland performs magic tricks and walks the tightrope in Maddigan’s Fantasia, her family’s traveling circus that criss-crosses the “nowhere” to entertain leftover people in leftover places following generations of cataclysmic poisonings, wars and plagues. When Garland’s father is killed by marauding Road Rats, she and her mother Maddie know Fantasia must move on since they are on a mission to find a new solar converter to supply power to Solis, the only surviving city. Then 15-year-old Timon and 11-year-old Eden appear with their baby sister, claiming to have traveled back in time fleeing from Nennog, their power-mad guardian. They join Fantasia’s odyssey through a hostile landscape, shadowed by Nennog’s assassin flunkies who repeatedly attempt to capture the boys and a mysterious talisman. As Garland confronts one obstacle after another, she remains true to her Maddigan roots while trying to sort out the mysterious Timon and Eden. An intense time-travel tale packed with Mahy’s usual repertoire of memorable tricksters, magical happenings and ominous undertones. (Fantasy. 10-16)