Veteran fantasists bring six new short stories to readers in a collection that explores aspects of water both benign and malignant. The subjects are quite varied: a young woman, abused by her grandfather, saves a water-girl and, in doing so, herself; a land-girl meets and falls in love with “The Sea-King’s Son,” in a sort of happy reversal of “The Little Mermaid”; a wily ferryman outsmarts a sea serpent and unseats the old goddesses; a young apprentice Guardian pressed into service far too early nevertheless saves the land from a rampaging Water-Horse; a rebellious mermaid-princess plumbs the depths of the sea’s darkness in “Kraken”; and, in a story sure to please fans of McKinley’s early works, a tired young woman from a modern Homeland finds her way (via her garden pond) to the desert of Damar’s past. Dickinson’s (Ropemaker, 2001, etc.) tales lean toward the dark, the violent, the malevolent; McKinley’s (Spindle’s End, 2000, etc.) are by and large gentler, emphasizing love, not conflict. Despite thematic differences, it is a remarkably consistent collection, tonally speaking, each tale slowly and completely developing its unique setting, plot, and characters with slow, stately language. This language, though, sometimes gets out of hand, particularly in McKinley’s tales, where commas insert themselves freely into sentences that seem to go on and on, until readers who are not paying attention may find themselves at the end of a sentence of which they have forgotten the beginning. Readers who can stick with it will find themselves rewarded with watery riches, and will look forward hopefully to Earth, Air, and Fire. (Short stories. YA)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-23796-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.
A teenage orphan enters a curious school and encounters mysteries and dangerous secrets in this first installment of a debut YA fantasy series.
Life in Croswald is about to change for 16-year-old orphan Ivy, a lowly castle maid in charge of the kitchen “scaldrons,” oven-heating, fire-breathing dragons. Fleeing the castle after a messy scaldron mishap, Ivy hops a strange conveyance that transports her to a school for potential quill-wielding, spell-casting “scrivenists.” (The author’s creative language—students are “sqwinches,” and “hairies” are lanterns housing fairies with luminous hair—is one of the book’s pleasures.) Learning that there is more to her gift for sketching than she realized, Ivy studies spells and the magical properties of inks and quills, but strange things keep happening. Why is an old scrivenist, long thought dead, working in secret? Why is the head of the oddly familiar school moving paintings to the “Forgetting Room” so that no one will remember they existed? How can Ivy get a look at a certain journal stored there, and what does it have to do with her recurrent dream? And why has Ivy drawn the interest of the Dark Queen of Croswald and her truly fearsome Cloaked Brood? The intrigue is layered with such whimsical inventions as one school lunchroom run by ghostly bad cooks and another by a jester who is best avoided, scrivenists who end their lives as tomes in a library, and small houses pulled by a gargantuan flying beast with its own weather system. Yes, there are many Harry Potter–ish elements: a school for young wand-wielders, quirky shops dealing in enchanted student supplies, eccentric characters, spells gone wrong, an evil pursuer. But Night’s blend of magic, danger, and suspense (and a touch of steampunk) is a well-realized, fresh fantasy world all its own, and Ivy is an appealing protagonist of relatable complexity. A few bobbles: Ivy seems to go without food for long stretches; the use of “effected” rather than “affected”; a professor who is both standing and perched on a chair.
Harry Potter–like threads spun into a fresh, enjoyable mix of magic and mystery.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9969486-5-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Stories Untold Press
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In this riveting futuristic novel, Spaz, a teenage boy with epilepsy, makes a dangerous journey in the company of an old man and a young boy. The old man, Ryter, one of the few people remaining who can read and write, has dedicated his life to recording stories. Ryter feels a kinship with Spaz, who unlike his contemporaries has a strong memory; because of his epilepsy, Spaz cannot use the mind probes that deliver entertainment straight to the brain and rot it in the process. Nearly everyone around him uses probes to escape their life of ruin and poverty, the result of an earthquake that devastated the world decades earlier. Only the “proovs,” genetically improved people, have grass, trees, and blue skies in their aptly named Eden, inaccessible to the “normals” in the Urb. When Spaz sets out to reach his dying younger sister, he and his companions must cross three treacherous zones ruled by powerful bosses. Moving from one peril to the next, they survive only with help from a proov woman. Enriched by Ryter’s allusions to nearly lost literature and full of intriguing, invented slang, the skillful writing paints two pictures of what the world could look like in the future—the burned-out Urb and the pristine Eden—then shows the limits and strengths of each. Philbrick, author of Freak the Mighty (1993) has again created a compelling set of characters that engage the reader with their courage and kindness in a painful world that offers hope, if no happy endings. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-08758-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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