Review of White Cat, by Holly Black

Fantasy, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

White Cat

The Curse Workers, Book One

by Holly Black

Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), New York, 2010. 310 pages.
Starred Review

“I wake up barefoot, standing on cold slate tiles. Looking dizzily down. I suck in a breath of icy air.

“Above me are starts. Below me, the bronze statue of Colonel Wallingford makes me realize I’m seeing the quad from the peak of Smythe Hall, my dorm.

“I have no memory of climbing the stairs up to the roof. I don’t even know how to get where I am, which is a problem since I’m going to have to get down, ideally in a way that doesn’t involve dying.”

If that isn’t a cliff-hanger beginning, it’s certainly a roof-balancing one. Cassel was dreaming of a white cat. So why is there a white cat outside, watching him on the roof? Later in the first chapter, Cassel tells us:

“Don’t be too sympathetic. Here’s the essential truth about me: I killed a girl when I was fourteen. Her name was Lila, she was my best friend, and I loved her. I killed her anyway. There’s a lot of the murder that seems like a blur, but my brothers found me standing over her body with blood on my hands and a weird smile tugging at my mouth. What I remember most is the feeling I had looking down at Lila — the giddy glee of having gotten away with something.”

I had already scanned the first chapter and decided not to turn it back in (because I have too many books checked out), when I met Holly Black at ALA and she talked about her book — and I moved it to the top of my stack of books to read. I was not disappointed. This book was one I had to keep reading once I started.

Cassel’s world is like ours, only certain people are born with the ability to perform curses. You can curse someone by touching their skin with your hands. But cursing is illegal, and everyone in that society wears gloves all the time.

Curses run a wide range. The most common are luck workers, but there are also people who can change memories, or people like Cassel’s mother who can give you whatever emotion she wants you to have. There are even people who can kill with a curse. Most rare of all are people who can transform things into something else.

All the curses have blowback to the person performing them — a strong reaction proportionate to the curse being performed. So if a memory worker changes a lot of memories, he will start forgetting things himself, for example.

However, Cassel is part of a family of curse workers — and also a family deeply involved in the world of organized crime. He’s the only one in his family who does not have the ability to curse anyone, and he’s been trying to lead a normal life at a private school, trying to forget about what he did to Lila, the reigning crime lord’s daughter. (His family covered it up.)

Now, though, with this sleep-walking caper at the beginning of the book, the school isn’t going to let him live in the dorm. He has to move back in with his brothers, which puts him in the thick of things again.

Holly Black has intricately and beautifully spun a world that seems plausible and real, even with those amazing premises. There are plots and counterplots and counter-counterplots, that get tied up cleverly at the end. Along the way, Cassel learns about making friends and trusting them.

I love that this is called “Book One,” because I can’t wait to read more about this fascinating world. This is a skilfully crafted novel that will make you look at gloves in a whole new way.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/white_cat.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

Fantasy, Romance, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

An Eclipse Novella

by Stephenie Meyer

Megan Tingley Books (Little, Brown), 2010. 178 pages.

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is a spin-off from Eclipse, telling the interesting back story of a minor character. Since it’s a novella it’s short, and made for a fun afternoon read.

It’s been awhile since I read Eclipse, and I haven’t seen the movie, so I didn’t remember who Bree Tanner was until I got to where her story was intersecting with Bella’s. That was fine, but you will want to have at least read Eclipse before you read this book, to be familiar with the world of sparkly vampires.

In Eclipse, Edward’s enemy is building an army of newborn vampires to battle and defeat the Cullens. Bree Tanner is one of that army, who’s used in Eclipse to show how ruthless the Volturi are. In an introduction, Stephenie Meyer says she wishes she had ended that differently now, and the reader will agree with her in that, because this book does give the reader sympathy for Bree, a ruthless bloodthirsty hunter.

I found it kind of amusing that one way their leader controls the newborn vampires is to tell them it’s dangerous to go out in the sunlight, that it would turn them to ash. He tells them all the old tales are true, and they believe him since they are, after all, vampires.

Toward the beginning, Bree meets another vampire who actually seems trustworthy, and they discover the secret. Even though she’s used to everyone looking beautiful, they’re filled with wonder at the sparkliness, just like Bella was in Twilight.

Stephenie Meyer manages to make us care about this bloodthirsty vampire hunter and want her to learn to transcend her savagery. We enjoy the beginnings of her journey to do so, though unfortunately her second life is very short.

An enjoyable quick adventure back in the world of sparkly vampires and undying love, or rather, undead love.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Half-Minute Horrors, edited by Susan Rich

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Readalouds, Short Stories 0

Half-Minute Horrors

edited by Susan Rich

Harper, 2009. 141 pages.

I read this book entirely waiting at traffic lights. Well, except the parts I read aloud to people when I first checked out the book. The many, many stories in here, by stellar children’s authors, are really short enough to be read in half a minute. It was perfect for reading at traffic lights, and would also be perfect for reading to a class of schoolchildren to get them interested in the library.

I have to admit, most of these stories would have scared me too much when I was a little girl with an overactive imagination. Now, they make me laugh with their delightful creepiness. Especially the first story, by Lemony Snicket, about the quiet man who watches you every time you sleep.

Since they are so short, the stories tend to be the sort of thing you’d find in The Twilight Zone, but they all tend toward the scary side, especially if you think about them too long!

Now, this isn’t for all kids. Not the ones like I was who scare easily. If I do ever get a chance to read some of these stories to a class of schoolchildren, I will have to be a little careful which ones I choose.

However, I know from working in public libraries that there are lots of kids who love scary stories and want more of them. This book is absolutely perfect for those kids. And if any such child is a reluctant reader, this book is exactly what’s needed to draw them in. The stories are so short, you can always read just one more.

A fun volume of scares in small doses.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Princess of Glass, by Jessica Day George

Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Princess of Glass

by Jessica Day George

Bloomsbury, New York, 2010. 266 pages.
Starred Review

I’m becoming a bigger and bigger fan of Jessica Day George. Princess of Glass is a follow up to her excellent Princess of the Midnight Ball, but it’s also an incredibly creative twist on the story of Cinderella.

I thought that the Cinderella story has been rewritten so well so many different ways, there was not much more that could be done with it. Though I must admit all the versions I’ve read are among my favorite fairy tale retellings: Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine, Bella at Midnight, by Diane Stanley, and Just Ella, by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

Jessica Day George does something quite different with the story and wonderfully creative, using the version where Cinderella attends three balls. What if the godmother were really an evil witch bent on entrapping Cinderella for her own evil purposes? What if the prince and all the people at the ball were affected by an enchantment and falling in love with Cinderella despite their true feelings?

Finally, what if a princess who had experience with evil enchantments and how to protect against them was at the court and was falling in love with the prince herself?

The main character of the book is Poppy, one of the younger of the 12 Dancing Princesses featured in Princess of the Midnight Ball. After so many princes suffered fatal accidents trying to break their family’s enchantment, the king tries to build bridges by sending some daughters to foreign courts.

Poppy is a delightfully independent young lady. When she notices strange things going on around Eleanora, a clumsy servant girl from an impoverished family, she determines to get to the bottom of it. I like the way she’s still knitting charms to help, which she learned from her brother-in-law.

The author includes two knitting patterns at the end, one for the poppy-decorated shawl Poppy wears to a ball. My only complaint is that I wish there were a picture. I’m going to have to make one to see what it looks like!

I found it ingenious how Jessica Day George wove in all the motifs of the Cinderella story (except maybe the stepsisters) in a way so completely different than I’d ever thought of them before. Brilliant!

I can’t help but hope that more stories will be forthcoming about some of the other 12 princesses and their adventures in other foreign lands.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Calamity Jack, by Shannon and Dean Hale

Adventure, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Teen Fiction Review 0

Calamity Jack

by Shannon and Dean Hale
illustrated by Nathan Hale

Bloomsbury, New York, 2010. 144 pages.

Here’s a companion graphic novel to Rapunzel’s Revenge, which was also written by Shannon Hale and her husband Dean and illustrated by Nathan Hale, who, interestingly enough, is no relation to the other Hales.

In Rapunzel’s Revenge, the creators took the story of Rapunzel as sort of a framework for a melodrama set in some sort of version of the Wild West, only with magic and a witch-like tyrant and strange creatures. In Rapunzel’s adventures, she met up with a con-artist named Jack who carried around a goose that laid golden eggs.

You don’t really need to read Rapunzel’s Revenge first to enjoy Calamity Jack. In it, Jack is bringing Rapunzel to the big city where he grew up. In Rapunzel’s Revenge, they rescued Rapunzel’s mother from a tyrant terrorizing the whole area. In Calamity Jack their plan is to rescue Jack’s mother from a tyrant terrorizing the whole area.

We also learn about Jack’s background. Not surprisingly, it involves a beanstalk and a giant. Though like Rapunzel’s Revenge, the fairy tale framework is simply a jumping-off point.

The story is wild, over-the-top, not exactly believable, and melodramatic — but a whole lot of fun. This is a graphic novel adventure yarn with a touch of romance and lots of teamwork, as Jack acquires a rival who’s also interested in Rapunzel. She’s still wielding her braids as a lasso, but it also takes Jack’s schemes to defeat the giants and save the town.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Birthday Ball, by Lois Lowry

Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

The Birthday Ball

by Lois Lowry
illustrations by Jules Feiffer

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010. 186 pages.

Princess Patricia Priscilla is bored. When she gets to talking with the seventeenth chambermaid and hears how much the girl loved school, she gets an idea. She’ll wear the chambermaid’s clothes and go to the village school.

The village school has a new schoolmaster, who is trying to learn to look stern, as a schoolmaster should. He is kind to his new pupil and tells her she would make a good teacher, after she takes in hand a little orphan girl.

But Patricia Priscilla can only enjoy this illicit pleasure for one week. For at the end of the week is her sixteenth birthday and the Birthday Ball, at which time she will have to choose a noble suitor.

The suitors who plan to attend are all over-the-top awful. Duke Desmond of Dyspepsia has the face of a warthog and huge, crooked, brown-spotted teeth. He is so ugly that looking glasses, mirrors, and any shiny object that might cast a reflection have been abolished from his domain. He travels with a band of splashers, so that no lake or body of water will be still enough when he passes by to reflect his face.

Prince Percival of Pustula, on the other hand, travels with a team of mirror-carriers, so that he can look at himself instead of at the scenery. He dresses entirely in black and keeps his hair and mustache dyed jet black and well oiled. A servant walks behind him with a brush, ready to brush off his abundant dandruff.

But Lois Lowry’s inventive genius truly stands out in the third and fourth suitors — Counts Colin and Cuthbert the Conjoint. I have to admit this is the first fairy-tale type story I’ve ever read with conjoined twins. They are joined at the middle, but unfortunately, they don’t get along at all. They constantly fight, at least when they aren’t exchanging belches or rude bathroom jokes.

Jules Feiffer’s illustrations perfectly match the book. The people in the book are caricatures, so his caricatures make just the right illustrations. The plot is quite simple, but the fun is in the silly ways all the elements come together to bring us to the outcome we’re looking for of the princess getting to choose the most worthy man at the ball.

The story is light and fluffy and fun. This would be a good choice for girls who like princess stories (or maybe the Rainbow Magic Fairies) and are ready to read a longer book with many chapters, but also large print and plenty of illustrations. It also would make a nice read-aloud with plenty of places for laughter. There are nice silly touches, like the princess speaking to her cat Delicious with words that rhyme with his name, and the queen being quite deaf and always misunderstanding what people say to her.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Red Pyramid, by Rick Riordan

Adventure, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

The Red Pyramid

The Kane Chronicles

by Rick Riordan

Disney Hyperion Books, New York, 2010. 516 pages.

Here is Rick Riordan’s eagerly awaited start to a new series, this one based on the gods of ancient Egypt rather than the gods of ancient Greece. I’m going to happily encourage the fans of the Percy Jackson series to snap this one up, as it’s very like that first series — kids with superhuman powers, finding out the ancient myths are true, the world in danger of destruction, and action-packed adventure and narrow escapes.

The chapters in the book switch between the narration of a brother and sister, Carter and Sadie Kane. They hardly know one another, because since their mother’s death, Sadie has lived with their grandparents in London, and Carter has roamed around the world, homeschooled by their archaeologist father. Sadie gets visitation with her father two days a year, and the book opens as one of those days begins.

Carter starts out the book. He says, “I guess it started in London, the night our dad blew up the British Museum.”

The beginning of the book reminded me annoyingly of the first book, written by Rick Riordan, of The 39 Clues. We’ve got a brother and sister who learn they are part of a family with ancient power. They go all over the world, chased by enemies, looking for things to help them. Come on, I heard it before.

However, The Red Pyramid does grow more compelling and more fully fleshed out as it goes on. The power of the Kanes comes from their uniting two ancient bloodlines tracing back to the Pharaohs. Their father’s attempt at the start of the book to “make things right” ends up unleashing five Egyptian gods and encasing their father in a golden tomb with the spirit of Osiris.

Their uncle Amos takes them in, to a powerful and magical mansion in New York City. But all too soon, Egyptian monsters come after them and burn down the mansion. The two start having strange spirit journeys in the night and discover strange new powers.

They go to Egypt and meet magicians from the House of Life. They learn that their father broke ancient rules of the House of Life by releasing the gods. They learn that the god Set is building a giant pyramid under Camelback Mountain in Phoenix and wants to unleash chaos onto the world. But in their attempt to learn to use their new powers and find a way to stop him, the House of Life stands opposed to them.

It’s all well-written, with narrow escape after narrow escape. Sadie has an attitude that if you tell her to do something, she’ll do the opposite — which ends up serving her well. I like the chapter titles — Things like “I Face the Killer Turkey,” “Muffin Plays with Knives,” “Leroy Meets the Locker of Doom,” and “Our Family is Vaporized.” Rick Riordan manages to keep the tone of modern kids and a bickering brother and sister, who learn to work together and deal with their amazing new powers and responsibility for the fate of the world.

You get to feeling for the Kane kids, too. It turns out that their mother’s death had something to do with Egyptian magic, too. And now their father is captured by Set. People around them keep getting harmed. Will they be able to cope?

After reading this book, my reaction is only slightly different from my reaction after reading the first of The 39 Clues: not so much, “I love this book!” as, “I bet kids will love this book!”

I also understand why that little girl in the library yesterday asked for books about hieroglyphics! I have a feeling those books, and any others we have about ancient Egypt, are suddenly going to get checked out much more often!

I do like the way Rick Riordan calms the worries of parents who might not like their children reading about false gods. Toward the beginning, Carter and Sadie have a scene with their uncle:

“‘You’re telling me our parents secretly worshipped animal-headed gods?’ I asked.

“‘Not worshipped,’ Amos corrected. ‘By the end of the ancient times, Egyptians had learned that their gods were not to be worshipped. They are powerful beings, primeval forces, but they are not divine in the sense one might think of God. They are created entities, like mortals, only much more powerful. We can respect them, fear them, use their power, or even fight them to keep them under control –‘

“‘Fight gods?’ Sadie interrupted.

“‘Constantly,’ Amos assured her. ‘But we don’t worship them. Thoth taught us that.'”

The book was too long for me — made it that much harder to sustain my interest. But by the end, I was thoroughly engaged, and I did finish up the book completely satisfied at having spent the time with it. I’m sure its length will please the kids who are fans. More time to spend in the adventure!

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Ice, by Sarah Beth Durst

Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Ice

by Sarah Beth Durst

Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), New York, 2009. 308 pages.
Starred Review

When Cassie was small, when her Dad was away from the station, Gram would tell her a fairy tale:

“Once upon a time, the North Wind said to the Polar Bear King, ‘Steal me a daughter, and when she grows, she will be your bride.’…

“And so, the Polar Bear King kidnapped a human child and brought her to the North Wind, and she was raised with the North Wind as her father and the West, South, and East Winds as her uncles….

“When the Polar Bear King came to claim his bride, she refused him. Her heart, she said belonged to another….

“Knowing the power of a magic promise, the North Wind’s daughter sought to counter it with her own bargain. ‘Then I will make a promise to you,’ the North Wind’s daughter replied. ‘Bring me to my love and hide us from my father, and when I have a daughter, she will be your bride.’ And so, the Bear carried the North Wind’s daughter to her human husband and hid them in the ice and snow….

“In time, the woman had a child. Passing by, the West Wind heard the birth and hurried to tell the North Wind where his daughter could be found. With the strength of a thousand blizzards, the North Wind swooped down onto the house that held his daughter, her husband, and their newborn baby. He would have torn the house to shreds, but the woman ran outside. ‘Take me,’ she cried, ‘but leave my loved ones alone!’

“The North Wind blew her as far as he could — as far as the castle beyond the ends of the world. There, she fell to the ground and was captured by trolls.” Cassie heard the bed creak as Gram stood. Her rich voice was softer now. “It is said that when the wind howls from the north, it is for his lost daughter.”

Cassie blinked her eyes open. “And Mommy is still there?”

Gram was a shadow in the doorway. “Yes.”

After this surprising prologue, the book opens the day before Cassie’s eighteenth birthday. Cassie remembers Gram’s story when she tracks down the biggest polar bear she’s ever seen. She smiles to think that if the Polar Bear King existed, this is what he’d look like. She loads her tranquilizer gun so she can tag and measure him.

And then he disappears.

She stays out late trying to figure out how she missed his trail, and is ready for a scolding from her father, back at the Arctic research station. What she isn’t prepared for is his reaction to her story of the giant disappearing polar bear. He tells her she must leave the station right away, fly to Fairbanks to stay with her grandmother. He says the station can no longer be her home.

When she wakes at three a.m. to the sound of the plane that’s come to take her away, she realizes how serious her father is. Gram is on the plane and she tells Cassie the fairy tale was Gram’s way of telling Cassie the truth. Her mother was the daughter of the North Wind. She bargained with the Polar Bear King, and now, on her eighteenth birthday, he’s coming for Cassie.

Cassie is incredulous, but also feels hurt and betrayed that either her father or her grandmother didn’t tell her the truth. She doesn’t want to leave her home. When Gram gives her time to get ready for the flight, Cassie goes outside and calls the Polar Bear King. He comes.

Now Cassie makes a bargain with the Polar Bear King. If he frees her mother from the trolls, she will marry him.

So begins this striking and original retelling of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.” I’ve already read two novelized versions that I loved: East, by Edith Pattou, and Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, by Jessica Day George. This one is very different, because it sets the story in the modern day.

I loved the way every chapter begins with Cassie’s GPS readings. They go haywire when the Polar Bear King brings her to his castle a mile north of the North Pole.

Bear is a munaqsri with the task of transferring and transporting the souls of polar bears who die into polar bears who are born. His heart breaks when he is not fast enough to be present at a polar bear birth, and the baby is stillborn.

I was delighted that Cassie comes up with a job, a way she can help, using data from the research station. This is not a heroine who is happy to sit alone in a magical castle! She finds a way to work side by side with Bear.

But what I loved most about the book was how it showed Cassie falling in love with Bear. She teases him and cares about him and sees his love for the polar bears. We can see her love for him blossoming on the page.

As in the fairy tale, he comes to her in the shape of a man at night, and on the first night, Cassie swings an ax at him! But as she comes to care about him, she allows him to sleep in the room, and then later she kisses him. Finally, she gives him a wedding night.

And my paragraph there is just about as explicit as the book gets. It’s beautifully romantic without having to go into detail. As in the fairy tale, though, her husband only comes to her in the shape of a man at night, and doesn’t want her to see his face.

When she breaks that taboo, tragedy strikes.

Cassie has grown up on the Arctic research station, so we believe that she is capable of surviving when she sets out to rescue her husband from the troll castle east of the sun and west of the moon.

This is another book I’d like to get into the hands of teens who love the romance in Twilight, because here, too, we have a story of One True Love. We have a heroine who is devastated by the loss of her beloved and is willing to do anything to bring them back together.

Back when the Harry Potter books were at the height of their popularity, my husband had the insight to say that he believed it was so popular because of the aspect of the chosen child. Everyone would like to be told: Here is your destiny. This is what you were born to do.

I think Twilight‘s popularity is similar. We wish that True Love were as simple as the “imprinting” Stephenie Meyer’s werewolves experience. I think that girls, at least, long to experience love that they feel is their destiny, to find their One True Love. And, take it from me, there’s a real satisfaction to calling the rival who steals away their husband, the Troll Queen!

I admit that I always love novelizations of fairy tales. I honestly thought that I’d read too many versions of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” to be impressed by another, but I loved this. Beautiful writing and a beautiful story. A wonderfully romantic tale of True Love you would go past the ends of the earth for.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/ice.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation, by Thomas Siddell

Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Teen Fiction Review 0

Gunnerkrigg Court

Volume One

Orientation

by Tom Siddell

Archaia Studios Press, 2007.

I heard about Gunnerkrigg Court at a Youth Services meeting for library staff. Another librarian was urging us to try out graphic novels. Kids love them and they are a fantastic way to pull kids into a love of books. She recommended Gunnerkrigg Court as a particularly interesting example.

Gunnerkrigg Court is based on a web comic, www.gunnerkrigg.com. The first volume, Orientation covers the first year heroine Antimony Carter spends at the strange school called Gunnerkrigg Court.

I found the whole volume strange, but strangely compelling at the same time. The illustrations are very well done, and add to the pull of the story.

I still haven’t figured out what kind of a world Gunnerkrigg Court is supposed to exist in. There are gods, sentient robots and shadows, robotic bird sentinels, a demon stuffed animal, and kids that turn into birds. All the teachers knew Antimony’s parents and seem to understand more of what is going on (What is going on?) than Antimony, but they aren’t sharing their knowledge with her.

Here’s the text on the first page:

“Gunnerkrigg Court does not look much like a school at all.
It closer resembles a large industrial complex than a place of learning.
Within the first week of attendance, I began noticing a number of strange occurrences.
The most prevalent of these oddities being the fact that I seemed to have obtained a second shadow.”

That first page is one of the more normal and straightforward pages!

However, besides being strange, the book is also strangely compelling. I think I am going to begin following the webcomic to find out what happens next and to see if they start making sense of the whole world and what kind of cause Antimony’s parents were involved in.

I don’t think of myself as a graphic novel fan, but by pointing me to a good one, my colleague may have begun changing that.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of A Conspiracy of Kings, by Megan Whalen Turner

Adventure, Alternate History, Fantasy, Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Conspiracy of Kings

by Megan Whalen Turner

Greenwillow Books, 2010. 316 pages.
Starred Review.

I’ve been waiting eagerly for this book, the fourth about The Thief Eugenides. When it did arrive last week, sure enough, I didn’t stop reading until I finished, even though that severely cut into my time to sleep. I will probably reread it soon to savor it more slowly and catch the things I missed that I’m sure Megan Whalen Turner inserted all along. She has a way of writing books that get richer every time you read them.

Again, I can’t say too much about the plot, because I don’t want to give away all that happens in the earlier books. This definitely is a book you would enjoy more if you read the earlier books first. Or at least you’ll definitely enjoy the earlier books more, because this book refers back to almost every surprising plot point in The Thief and The Queen of Attolia.

I was fully expecting to be championing this book for this year’s Newbery Medal, but now that I’ve read it, I think it’s probably not enough of a stand-alone story to win. However, rabid fans of the earlier books (like me) will gobble it up and be excited that she’s definitely setting the stage for further exciting drama and conflict with the Medes. I strongly suspect that Eugenides will be up to some further scheming in future books, and I only wish that Megan Whalen Turner could write such brilliant books just a little bit faster!

I like that this book featured our old friend Sophos from the first book, The Thief. In A Conspiracy of Kings, Sophos must grow into his heritage. He’s the heir to the throne of Sounis, but the book starts with his kidnapping. There are powerful people who would like to make him a puppet king with the Medes pulling the strings. Can Sophos find a way to escape that fate? Can someone who preferred poetry to swordplay and who blushes easily and can’t lie convincingly seize and hold a kingdom?

In the first chapter, Sophos writes:

“I was crossing the courtyard of the villa, and it was as if one of Terve’s lessons had come to life. He may as well have been there, shouting, ‘You are suddenly attacked by fifteen men; what are you going to do?’ Only they weren’t a product of Terve’s imagination; they were real men, cutting down the guards at the front gate and streaming into the courtyard of the villa.”

If you haven’t yet read these books, full of adventure, danger, plots and counterplots, and wonderfully flawed heroes and heroines — order a copy of The Thief right away and get started!

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