Review of Speaking From Among the Bones, by Alan Bradley

Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery, Starred Review 0

Speaking From Among the Bones

by Alan Bradley

Delacorte Press, New York, 2013. 378 pages.
Starred Review

Hooray! Another installment in the detective novels about Flavia de Luce, eleven-year-old genius and poison aficionado.

In this book, the locals are celebrating the quincentennial of the death of Saint Tancred by opening his tomb. Along the way, they find a dead body that is not five hundred years old, but rather that of their missing organist. Naturally, Flavia ends up gathering the clues to find the murderer.

I enjoyed this book immensely. There’s another clever puzzle for Flavia to solve while bicycling around the neighborhood. This time, she and her sisters weren’t nearly as mean to each other, and I enjoyed the respite. It looks like their beloved Buckshaw will have to be sold, which pulled them together. The book did end with a bombshell regarding their family, which stresses that these books should be read in order. Those who have read so far will be delighted as I with the latest installment.

Here are a few fun sections:

Ordinarily, anyone who made such a remark to my face would go to the top of my short list for strychnine. A few grains in the victim’s lunch pail — probably mixed with the mustard in his Spam sandwich, which would neatly hide both the taste and the texture . . .

It wasn’t until I was nearly home — not, in fact, until I was sweeping past the great stone griffins that guarded the Mulford Gates — that I realized I had overlooked two very important things. The first was that business of the bat, and how it had managed to get into the church. The second was this: If the tomb in the crypt was occupied by the remains of Mr. Collicutt, where on earth, then, were the bones of Saint Tancred?

Whenever I’m a little blue I think about cyanide, whose color so perfectly reflects my mood. It is pleasant to think that the manioc plant, which grows in Brazil, contains enormous quantities of the stuff in its thirty-pound roots, all of which, unfortunately, is washed away before the residue is used to make our daily tapioca.

I knew that the instant life ends, the human body begins to consume itself in a most efficient manner. Our own bacteria transform us with remarkable swiftness into gas bags containing methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and mercaptan, to name just a few. Although I had for some time been making notes toward a future work to be called De Luce on Decomposition, I had not had until that moment any real, so to speak, firsthand experience.

There you have it: An old-fashioned cozy mystery with a precocious and delightfully bloodthirsty sleuth in postwar England. Tremendous fun!

flaviadeluce.com
bantamdell.com

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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 Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Horten’s Incredible Illusions, by Lissa Evans

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Fantasy, Mystery 0

Horten’s Incredible Illusions

Magic, Mystery & Another Very Strange Adventure

by Lissa Evans

Sterling Children’s Books, New York, 2012. Originally published in Great Britain in 2012 as Big Change for Stuart.

Horten’s Incredible Illusions is a follow-up to Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms, and you should definitely read the first book first. I can say with confidence that if you liked the first book, you will also enjoy the second.

In the second book, Stuart Horten has found his uncle’s magic tricks, but now he must figure out a puzzle that involves an adventure with each piece of magical equipment. The puzzle leads to his uncle’s will, which he needs to prove the tricks belong to him.

The puzzle format works well, and this is simply a fun adventure tale for kids. Here’s a sample from when Stuart and April first get to look over the tricks:

They looked at each other. “Once you start using magic, it’s very hard to stop,” quoted April, her voice breathy. “It’s another puzzle, isn’t it? Another adventure?”

Stuart closed his hand over the star, and felt the six prongs dig into his skin. His heart was suddenly thumping; he felt both excited and slightly frightened, and he knew from April’s expression that she felt the same. The hunt for Great-Uncle Tony’s workshop had been a wild and exciting chase, sprinkled with danger and magic, and now another quest was beckoning. But for what? What was the prize this time?

He felt his hand tingle, and he knew that the object he was holding was so full of magic that over fifty years it had bleached the paper it was wrapped in; he could feel its power.

sterlingpublishing.com/kids

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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 Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms, by Lissa Evans

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Fantasy, Mystery 0

Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms

Magic, Mystery & a Very Strange Adventure

by Lissa Evans

Sterling Children’s Books, 2012. 270 pages.

Here’s a truly fun story with a magical twist on being the new kid in town. Stuart Horten — S. Horten — Always called “Shorten” — is very short. His parents are extremely clever, but not very sensible, and they move to a new town right at the start of the summer, so Stuart doesn’t have any chance to make new friends. They move to Beeton, the town where Stuart’s father grew up, and in town are the ruins of the old factory where Stuart’s great-uncle Tony manufactured magic tricks — before he disappeared.

Stuart turns up a puzzle from Great-Uncle Tony that leads to a mystery that leads him all over town. Tony was a fine magician, and Stuart can’t help but wonder what really happened when he disappeared.

The big strength of this book is the quirky characters: Stuart’s father, who always uses big words; the identical triplet girls next door who see themselves as investigative journalists; and the people in the town whom Stuart meets along the way. The puzzle is engaging and keeps you going.

Now, I wasn’t quite believing in the ending, or that the puzzle would have survived the passage of years as well as it did. But I think I’m probably a more difficult audience on that front than most kids, and the story-telling itself was outstanding. The book reminded me of my beloved Edward Eager books — ordinary kids spending a summer tinged with magic.

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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 Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, by Jasper Fforde

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Mystery, Science Fiction, Starred Review 0

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

by Jasper Fforde

Viking, 2011. 362 pages.
Starred Review

I never thought I liked metafiction, where characters enter books. The concept always broke down at some point and just seemed silly. That was before I read Jasper Fforde. While his work is, indubitably, silly, the concepts are inscrutable and flawlessly carried out.

In this volume, we are following a written Thursday Next, a character in a book about Thursday. Thursday Next herself is missing. So is the written Thursday we are following possibly Thursday herself, hidden in the newly rebooted Book World? Whatever is the case, our Thursday has a mystery to solve, and we’re right there with her.

There is so much cleverness in this book! This series is for those who love words and literature and thinking about words and literature. I started marking passages I wanted to share with people, and now the whole book is full of post-it notes. I think I can recite these sections without giving away the plot. The plot is a good one, don’t get me wrong; but you will most enjoy these books if you love the playing the author does with the language and the concepts. For example, here’s a brief scene with some Lost Positives:

I moved quietly to the French windows and stepped out into the garden to release the Lost Positives that the Lady of Shalott had given me. She had a soft spot for the orphaned prefixless words and thought they had more chance to thrive in Fiction than in Poetry. I let the defatigable scamps out of their box. They were kempt and sheveled but their behavior was peccable if not mildly gruntled. They started acting petuously and ran around in circles in a very toward manner.

Our Thursday gets a chance to look for the real Thursday in the Real World, and Professor Plum explains the rigors of being briefly Real:

“It’s highly disorderly,” he explained, “not like here. There is no easily definable plot, and you can run yourself ragged wondering what the significance can be of a chance encounter. You’ll also find that for the most part there is no shorthand to the narrative, so everything happens in a long and painfully drawn-out sequence. Apparently the talk can be confusing — for the most part, people just say the first thing that comes into their heads.”

“Is it as bad as they say it is?”

“I’ve heard it’s worse. Here in the BookWorld, we say what needs to be said for the story to proceed. Out there? Well, you can discount at least eighty percent of chat as just meaningless drivel.”

“I never thought the percentage was that high.”

“In some individuals it can be as high as ninety-two percent. The people to listen to are the ones who don’t say very much.”

“Oh.”

“There are fun things, too,” said Plum, sensing my disappointment. “You’ll get used to it in the end, but if you go out there accepting that seventy-five percent of talk is utter twaddle and eighty-five percent of people’s lives are spent dithering around, you won’t go far wrong. But above all don’t be annoyed or distracted when random things happen for absolutely no purpose.”

“There’s always a purpose,” I said, amused by the notion of utter pointlessness, “even if you don’t understand what it is until much later.”

“That’s the big difference between here and there,” said Plum. “When things happen after a randomly pointless event, all that follows is simply unintended consequences, not a coherent narrative thrust that propels the story forward.”

Much later, I loved the character Thursday discovered involved in the mystery:

“And the name of the driver?”

“Gatsby.”

“The Great Gatsby drives taxis in his spare time?”

“No, his younger and less handsome and intelligent brother — the Mediocre Gatsby. He lives in Parody Valley over in Vanity. Here’s his address.”

When they go to see Mediocre, they meet his brother, Loser Gatsby, at a meeting:

“This is our Siblings of More Famous BookWorld Personalities self-help group,” explained Loser. “That’s Sharon Eyre, the younger and wholly disreputable sister of Jane; Roger Yossarian, the draft dodger and coward; Brian Heep, who despite admonishments from his family continues to wash daily; Rupert Bond, still a virgin and can’t keep a secret; Tracy Capulet, who has slept her way round Verona twice; and Nancy Potter, who is . . . well, let’s just say she’s a term that is subject to several international trademark agreements.”

Along the way, there are choice bits at the start of each chapter quoting from Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion. Here are two I particularly enjoyed:

Although Outlander authors kill, maim, disfigure and eviscerate bookpeople on a regular basis, no author has ever been held to account, although lawyers are working on a test case to deal with serial offenders. The mechanism for transfictional jurisdiction has yet to be finalized, but when it is, some authors may have cause to regret their worst excesses.

Off the coast lies Vanity Island, and off Vanity likes Fan Fiction. Beyond Fan Fiction is School Essays and beyond that Excuses for Not Doing School Essays. The latter is often the most eloquent, constructed as it is in the white-hot heat of panic, necessity and the desire not to get a detention.

Though in most books written with so many jokes and so much cleverness, you wouldn’t expect to find a coherent plot, this book truly does have one, and contributed to making this a thoroughly satisfying read.

But, bottom line, reading the quotations above should give you the idea of what’s going on here. If you find those bits at all humorous, you need to read the Thursday Next books. I normally say to read them in order, but I’m starting to lose track of what has gone before, and I’m not completely sure it matters. In this book, I’m sure you could start fresh and still enjoy it.

jasperfforde.com
penguin.com

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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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Great Cake Mystery, by Alexander McCall Smith

Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Great Cake Mystery

Precious Ramotswe’s Very First Case

by Alexander McCall Smith
illustrations by Iain McIntosh

Anchor Books (Random House), New York, 2012. First published in Scotland in 2010. 73 pages.
Starred Review

A book for beginning chapter book readers about the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective, Precious Ramotswe, when she was a little girl! Now readers ready for short chapters can enjoy the flavor of Botswana, as adults have been doing for so long.

Sweet things have been disappearing at Precious’s school, and one boy has been found to have sticky hands. But is that enough evidence against him? Precious doesn’t think so, and she comes up with a clever trick for catching the real thief.

The story is simple and perhaps a little predictable, but it doesn’t talk down to kids and would be a delight to read aloud to a class or to a family at bedtime.

The style, matter-of-fact and pleasant, matches that used in the books for adults, and I did feel like I was meeting the same person as a child. And now we have the treat of her interactions with her father, Obed Ramotswe. In fact, he tells Precious a story at the beginning, which is what triggers the thought that she may be a detective one day. And then a piece of cake is missing from her school.

She might easily have forgotten all about it – after all, it was only a piece of cake – but the next day it happened again. This time it was a piece of bread that was stolen – not an ordinary piece of bread, though: this one was covered in delicious strawberry jam. You can lose a plain piece of bread and not think twice about it, but when you lose one spread thickly with strawberry jam it’s an altogether more serious matter.

This book is a selection for this year’s Summer Reading Program in Fairfax County, Virginia, and I’m delighted that got me to finally read it. This will be a fun one to tell kids about. It’s perfect for that first desire to step into chapter books and will reward readers with an absorbing story.

I also love that it’s set in modern Botswana as a lovely place where normal kids live and go to school. Some things about Botswana – like the wildlife – are spelled out, and the pronunciation of names (like Ramotswe) is given. But it’s clear that kids are kids and are the same everywhere.

alexandermccallsmith.com
anchorbooks.com

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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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

by Alexander McCall Smith

Pantheon Books, New York, 2012. 257 pages.
Starred Review

Ah, when I finish a No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Novel, I feel I’ve spent some time with my dear friends in Botswana. Never mind that they are fictional!

In this installment, at first I was annoyed with Mma Makutsi. She’s feeling a bit grandiose after her marriage to Phuti Radiphuti. But there were soon plenty of things to distract from that. This book was filled with personal troubles that needed to be solved: Mma Potokwane of the orphanage was being dismissed. Fanwell, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni’s former apprentice was arrested. And Phuti Radiphuti and Grace, his new wife, were having a house built. What’s more, the detective agency has a very special visitor, a visitor who’s been referred to many times, but whom readers have never met before.

Some of the solutions to these problems are not terribly surprising, though we do enjoy the way they play out. One solution was completely unexpected and made me laugh out loud, even in a doctor’s waiting room.

I like the customary reflective paragraph at the beginning:

In Botswana, home to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency for the problems of ladies, and others, it is customary — one might say, very customary — to enquire of the people whom you meet whether they have slept well. The answer to that question is almost inevitably that they have indeed slept well, even if they have not, and have spent the night tossing and turning as a result of the nocturnal barking of dogs, the activity of mosquitoes or the prickings of a bad conscience. Of course, mosquitoes may be defeated by nets or sprays, just as dogs may be roundly scolded; a bad conscience, though is not so easily stifled. If somebody were to invent a spray capable of dealing with an uncomfortable conscience, that person would undoubtedly do rather well — but perhaps might not sleep as soundly as before, were he to reflect on the consequences of his invention. Bad consciences, it would appear, are there for a purpose: to make us feel regret over our failings. Should they be silenced, then our entirely human weaknesses, our manifold omissions, would become all the greater — and that, as Mma Ramotswe would certainly say, is not a good thing.

I felt warm and content when I finished reading this book, and closed it with a smile.

alexandermccallsmith.com
pantheonbooks.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/limpopo_academy.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Spellman Files

by Lisa Lutz

Performed by Christina Moore

Recorded Books, 2007. 8 CDs. Unabridged.
Starred Review.

Izzy Spellman has worked in the family business since she was 12 years old. The family business is private detection. But they don’t really do glamorous murder cases. Their work tends more toward background checks and tailing people. Izzy is very good at those things.

Izzy was always something of a black sheep, even in their crazy family. But now that Izzy is 28 and her little sister is 14, she’d like to set a better example for Rae. Still, Izzy can’t resist doing a background check on a potential boyfriend, nor can she bring herself to tell him the truth about herself and her family. Finally, she decides if she ever wants to have a normal life, she’ll have to get out of the family business.

Surprisingly, her parents agree. But they give her one more case, a cold case about a boy who disappeared 15 years ago. However, when Rae disappears in the middle of the case, things get awfully serious.

I listened to this book on a car trip up to Philadelphia for PLA Biennial Conference, and when I got there, I got to meet the author and purchase the next book! On long trips, I love listening to books that make me laugh, and this book filled the bill beautifully. The mystery aspect was a tiny bit disappointing — this isn’t a puzzle-type detective novel. But taken for what it is, the story of a young woman with a crazy family trying to have a normal life, and not really succeeding, this book is a smashing success. Because, after all, who of us is really normal? But listening to Izzy’s story, you might start to think you are.

Big thanks to my co-worker Lynne for recommending this as a great book to listen to.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/spellman_files.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Liar’s Moon, by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Fantasy, Mystery, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Liar’s Moon

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Arthur A. Levine Books, Scholastic, 2011. 356 pages.
Starred Review

This book is a sequel to Star Crossed, and I liked Elizabeth Bunce’s first book, A Curse Dark as Gold so much, I bought my own copy of StarCrossed and Liar’s Moon. I did get a chance to reread StarCrossed before I took up Liar’s Moon.

I did enjoy Liar’s Moon, and there’s absolutely no question in my mind that I will snap up the next book. Some details are left very badly hanging, so it’s clear this is intended as at least a trilogy.

This is not your typical second-book-of-a-trilogy, though. After narrowly escaping from her home in the city of Gerse in the first book, Digger is back, trying to survive in the underbelly of the city. Right from the start, she’s captured and thrown into prison — in a cell with Durrell Decath, whom we met at the very start of StarCrossed, but then didn’t see much of.

It turns out that Digger’s in prison just to talk with Durrell. He says he’s been falsely accused of murder. But if he didn’t murder his elderly wife, who did?

If you’re expecting a book very similar to StarCrossed (like I was), then you’re going to be disappointed. But if you take it for what it is — a murder mystery set in a fantastical world, with our heroine scouring the underworld for clues — then there’s lots to enjoy here.

In all her books, Elizabeth Bunce is skilled at making another world seem completely down-to-earth and real.

Now, there’s a huge plot development at the very end, so I think I need to reserve judgment on this trilogy until it finishes up and the story is complete. So far, I enjoyed the first book more, but I definitely liked this one enough to want to reread it when the third book comes out. I definitely want to see more of Digger’s friends, fighting in the war, and find out how that battle turns out. I don’t really understand Digger’s relationship with her brother, and that will probably become more clear with time, too.

But meanwhile I highly recommend this series. The first book gave you conflicting loyalties and magic and secrets. This one gives you a murder mystery set in an alien world. Who knows what will be next?

elizabethcbunce.com
thisisteen.com/liarsmoon
scholastic.com

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

There’s a lot we could discuss about the ending, so please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Death Comes to Pemberley, by P. D. James

Austenalia, Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery, Starred Review 0

Death Comes to Pemberley

by P. D. James

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2011. 291 pages.
Starred Review

When I heard that a stellar and distinguished British mystery writer was going to tackle a mystery sequel to Pride and Prejudice, I knew I had to read it! I’ve read a lot of Jane Austen knock-offs and love them (see the Austenalia category), but not all the authors were ones I’ve heard of before.

I will confess that I’d never read a P. D. James book before this one. I’d long meant to, and saw a movie based on Children of Men, but have never quite gotten around to it. Still, I was surprised when I liked the Pride and Prejudice sequel aspects of this book more than I did the mystery.

Before I criticize, let me say that I loved reading this book. It was a delight, and I recommend it to all other Jane Austen fans. I’m going to point out some ways it wasn’t perfect, but it was still very very good and tremendously enjoyable. So please keep that in mind!

I do think I liked it more than Carrie Bebris’s Jane Austen sequels. In those, I didn’t really appreciate the paranormal element she brought in, and P. D. James did a better job imitating Jane Austen’s style. (Though I thoroughly enjoyed Carrie Bebris’s books as well.)

I admit I was delighted with her choice of victim and suspect. P. D. James brings back most of the important characters from Pride and Prejudice. The Prologue nicely sets the stage, and fits absolutely well with what Jane Austen said at the end of her book about how her characters’ lives continued.

A couple things I would have liked to be different:

Preparations for a ball at Pemberley are interrupted by a murder. Shucks. It would have been fun to get to read about a ball at Pemberley.

Georgiana is considering two suitors, but her choice is settled very easily. Some romance and romantic scenes and misunderstanding and revelation would have been nicely in the spirit of Jane Austen.

My biggest objection is that the mystery was not solved by our main characters. When all has been resolved, Darcy is simply informed of the resolution. Sure, we had some clues and some suspicions, but not really enough to solve the crime, and it ended up pretty much being luck that let the truth come out. I would have liked it much better if Elizabeth had solved the crime, coming up with the crucial information, or, next best, Mr. Darcy.

I also was kind of annoyed by an ending talk between Elizabeth and Darcy. They discussed things that they’d already cleared up at the end of Pride and Prejudice. This was unnecessary.

However, some things I loved:

She really got the spirit of the characters and the society. Without petty tricks like imitating Pride and Prejudice‘s first line.

She brought back so many characters from the original book. Even Mr. Bennett visits for awhile, just as Jane Austen mentioned he was wont to do.

She made the legal process at that time, with magistrates and the inquest and trial process, very clear and easy to understand.

Most of all, I felt like I was spending time with my beloved characters again. Definitely a treat for fans of Pride and Prejudice!

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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 Wizard of Dark Street, by Shawn Thomas Odyssey

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Mystery 0

The Wizard of Dark Street

by Shawn Thomas Odyssey

Egmont USA, New York, 2011. 345 pages.

This is a fun and clever middle-grade fantasy. We’ve got that old fantasy stand-by — a girl with a gift of Natural Magic, the like of which hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years — but she doesn’t want to be her uncle the Wizard’s apprentice. She wants to be a detective.

So, her uncle needs to find a new apprentice. When they’ve got the apprentices assembled to try out, something awful happens to her uncle, and Oona has a case to solve.

One thing I love about this book is that it doesn’t try to tell how Oona first became a detective, but starts us just after some outrageous action has happened, implying that what we’re about to hear is even more dramatic. Here’s a paragraph on the third page:

“‘You’ve got to be more careful!’ That had been her uncle’s advice on the subject of her nearly getting her head chopped off. His words had been direct, and his tone uncharacteristically stern. ‘I will only agree to this detective business of yours if you promise not to go getting yourself into such terrible trouble. I mean it, Oona! Igregious Goodfellow was a scoundrel, a thief, and a homicidal maniac all rolled into one. You’re incredibly lucky that it was your hair that got caught in that horrible man’s guillotine. You should never have followed him to his secret hideout. The moment you discovered he was the Horton Family Jewelry Store thief, you should have left matters to the police.'”

The author keeps up the tone of the book throughout, and, yes, the things Oona encounters in the rest of the book are even more dramatic.

“Presently, she turned her gaze north, and before her lay all of Dark Street, the last of the thirteen Faerie roads, connecting the World of Man to the fabled Land of Faerie. A broad cobblestone avenue more than thirteen miles long, the street stretched out in a continuous line, a world unto itself, unbroken by cross streets or intersections. The buildings rose up from the edges of the sidewalks like crooked teeth crammed into a mouth too small to fit. They listed and leaned against one another for support, giving the impression that if one of the buildings should ever fall down, then all of the others would quickly follow, toppling one by one like dominoes.

“She considered the street for a moment, this ancient world between worlds, with its enormous Glass Gates at one end and the equally vast Iron Gates at the other. And yet of these two gateways, only the Iron Gates ever opened, and then only once a night, upon the stroke of midnight, when the massive doors would swing inward on hinges as big as houses, opening for a single minute upon the sprawling, ambitious city of New York. For the amount of time it took a second hand to travel once around the face of a clock, the Iron Gates remained open to any who should choose to venture across their enchanted threshold. Few ever did. Few ever even noticed.

“In a city such as New York, even at midnight, the people were too busy getting from one place to another to observe anything out of the ordinary. And those who did see the street suddenly appear out of nowhere might simply pretend that it was not there at all. They might turn their faces, and when they looked again, the street would be gone, and they would tell themselves that it had been a trick of the light. Nothing more. The children of New York would surely have been more apt to see the street than adults, but of course, at midnight most good little children were tucked safely away into their beds, dreaming of stranger places still.”

Shawn Thomas Odyssey keeps the story inventive, fast-paced, and clever. We’ve got detective novel elements like a locked room and a bumbling police chief and a super villain behind the scenes, but it’s set in this magical world and the fate of even the World of Men may be at stake.

I read this book on the airplane flying from New York to Seattle, and it was a nice light-hearted yarn for the flight. It has some amusing elements like a clock that tells bad Knock-Knock jokes. I was inordinately pleased with myself when I figured out the riddle Oona needed to solve in the process of looking for her uncle. A lot of things that seem scary at first, like witches and goblins, end up being quite humorous. And some things you might not be afraid of, like a faerie servant, end up rather scary. This has the puzzles of a detective story, with some Fantasy tropes twisted and thrown in.

I love that the book has the subtitle, An Oona Carte Mystery, because that implies there will be more. This will be a mystery series for kids I can get excited about!

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Source: This review is based on an Advance Reader Copy I got at ALA Annual Conference.