nonfiction

“A romp of a Regency romance told
through the discerning voice of a witty teenage beauty
whose family needs her to marry for money.”
from keeping the castle
RAGE OF LIONS
Jobling, Curtis
Viking (448 pp.)
$16.99Jun. 19, 2012
978-0-670-01389-0
Series: Wereworld, 2
The second episode in a series projected
to run to at least six cranks up the
stakes, the gore, the body count and the
number of super-powered were-creatures
as the kingdom of Westland is overwhelmed
by huge armies of invaders.
The cruel, depraved, deposed Lion King (take that, Disney)
sits besieged in his tower, but his mad werelion son
Lucas and wererat minion Vankaskan remain free—to kidnap
werefox Lady Gretchen and sneak out through the sewers
of Highcliff. In pursuit goes werewolf/reluctant royal
heir Drew and best buddy/romantic complication Whitley,
unaware that they are heading straight into the claws of
Catlord invaders led by Onyx, a gigantic werepanther. Frequently
punctuated with blood-spattered massacres and
atrocities, the multi-threaded plot speeds its way to a pair of
separate climactic battles. One leaves Drew’s allies scattered
in flight, and the other puts Drew aboard a slave ship bound
for a gladiatorial arena overseas.
Give Jobling a hand for crafting a sequel that’s even more
lurid and action packed than the opener. (Fantasy. 12-15)
KEEPING THE CASTLE
Kindl, Patrice
Viking (272 pp.)
$16.99 | Jun. 14, 2012
978-0-670-01438-5
A romp of a Regency romance told
through the discerning voice of a witty
teenage beauty whose family needs her
to marry for money.
Lovely Althea Crawley, 17, lives with
her kind but clueless twice-widowed mother in Crooked Castle,
a drafty white elephant perched precariously on the Yorkshire
coast. Althea’s 4-year-old brother, who’s heir to the castle, and
her self-centered older stepsisters, Prudence and Charity, round
out the household. With few funds to make ends meet, Althea,
unlike so many fictional heroines who go off on unlikely adventures,
accepts that she must marry for money. Prospects look up
with the arrival to the neighborhood of handsome young Lord
Boring. When Althea launches her campaign, described in military
terms, to secure his affections, not all goes as planned. As
she pursues him, her occasional outspokenness raises a few eyebrows
but also attracts admiration from an unsuspected quarter.
Kindl respects the conventions of the genre while also gently
mocking it. Althea observes, for example, that their ancient
butler, Greengages, correctly pronounces the name of neighbor
Doctor Haxhamptonshire as “Doctor Hamster.” Readers
will enjoy Althea’s entertaining forays into the marriage market,
secure in the belief that all will end well.
While the happy ending comes as no surprise, the path
to it is funny as well as satisfying, with many nods to Jane
Austen along the way. (Fiction. 13 & up)
SHADOW SPELL
King, Caro
Aladdin (320 pp.)
$15.99 | paper $6.99 | May 1, 2012
978-1-4424-2045-8
978-1-4424-3908-8 paperback
A great deal of action is regularly
stopped cold by explication, gory and
funny parts and some delicious ideas in this
confusing middle-grade fantasy, sequel to
Seven Sorcerers (2011).
There is a lot to assimilate in this tale. Jibbit is a gargoyle
with a good heart who is afraid of the ground. Skerridge is a
rogue bogeyman. Strood of the Terrible House is busy raising
an army of tiger-men out of disparate bodies and the ubiquitous
crowsmorte vine. Ninevah Redstone is the plucky girl who may
save this world, but not before many adventures, startling and
icky brushes with torture and death and more twists and turns
than might strictly speaking be necessary. Specialized vocabulary
abounds: There are the Quick, the Grimm and the Fabulous
(labels for, respectively, humans and two different types
of nonhuman), the tombfolk and the skinkin. Words are capitalized
portentously, and much dialogue is communicated in
aggressive dialect that’s positively festooned with apostrophes.
There are more dei ex machina than can be enumerated, and go
round and round, and a lot of things end up where they started,
only not exactly.
It is difficult to know where one is in the story or where
the story is going, quite, but readers captivated by the humor
or the horror may not care, as everything is (kind of) tied up
in the end. (Fantasy. 10-14)
CRAZY DANGEROUS
Klavan, Andrew
Thomas Nelson (352 pp.)
$14.99 | May 1, 2012
978-1-59554-793-4
In this fast-paced but predictable
thriller, a good kid who has fallen in with
a bad crowd comes to the aid of a bullied
schizophrenic girl.
Weary of the pressures of being a
preacher’s kid, Sam falls in with a group
of thuggish delinquents. When Sam witnesses Jennifer, a loner
known for acting and speaking strangely, being bullied by some of
his new circle, he intervenes and consequently invites their wrath.
Jennifer has terrifying hallucinations involving demons, the devil
and death. Sam suspects that these visions may be the key to solving
a mystery and prophecies of more terrible things to come,
but it eventually becomes clear that Jennifer’s visions are of the
organic variety. For a novel that is billed as religious teen fiction,
religion is surprisingly peripheral to the story. There is a scene
with Sam attending Sunday church service and another in which
he seeks spiritual advice from his pastor father. Jennifer questions
why God allows her to be tormented with her terrible visions.
In the end, this is a garden-variety, formulaic mystery
thriller with religious window dressing. (Thriller. 12 & up)
LITTLE BO PEEP
Lamont, Priscilla
Illus. by Lamont, Priscilla
Frances Lincoln (20 pp.)
$15.99 | May 1, 2012
978-1-84780-154-8
Series: Nursery Rhyme Crimes,
Illustrator Lamont’s Nursery Rhyme
Crimes series gets off to an uneven start.
The device of retelling classic tales from another viewpoint
is no longer new, but it remains popular. Here, the bored shepherding
tyke struggles to teach her flock how to play hide and
seek, only to later lose them because they have hidden themselves
so well. Though the adults who have to search for them
aren’t impressed at the trick, the sheep feel she was unjustly
blamed. In the simultaneously publishing companion, Tom, Tom,
the Piper’s Son, the pig tells the truth behind the lesser-known
rhyme about a boy, a stolen pig and a beating. It seems the boy
and the pig were fast friends, bonding over the boy’s piping and
the pig’s “pongs.” But when the pig hears the word “bacon,” the
boy steals him away to live in the forest. While there is nothing
inherently wrong with Lamont’s stories, they don’t have much
pizzazz either. Moreover, their appeal Stateside may be limited.
A few British spellings (practised, pedalled, cos) and several
rhymes that don’t work with American accents will trip readers
up. “When we came out from where we were hid, / how surprised
they all were, to be sure. / But it seems that Bo Peep was
sent home in disgrace— / you would think that she’d broken the
law!” And although Lamont’s pen-and-watercolor illustrations
amuse, they do not compensate for the books’ liabilities.
Fails to live up to the high standards already in place for
alternative-POV classics. (Picture book. 4-6)
NO SAFETY IN NUMBERS
Lorentz, Dayna
Dial (272 pp.)
$17.99 | May 1, 2012
978-0-8037-3873-7
A nightmare scenario plays out in a
shopping mall, and a group of very different
teens must strategize to survive in
this engrossing, if uneven thriller.
Reserved and sarcastic Marco is the
first to suspect a problem when he arrives
at the mall for work and finds a strange device near a ventilation
shaft. Soon, Lexi, the computer-whiz daughter of a preoccupied
senator, self-described drama nerd Shay and insecure jock Ryan
find themselves trapped along with thousands of others when
authorities lock the shopping center down. The third-person
narration shifts focus among these four teens as the days go by.
A sense of unease begins to grow, and its progressive build allows
time for nuanced exploration of the main characters, including
the set-up of a love triangle among three of them and the violent
antics of Ryan’s self-entitled teammates. However, the docility
of the masses extends too long to be entirely believable; even
after a hazmat-suit–clad figure carries out Shay’s collapsed Nani,
they fail to panic. “Amazing, the herd’s ability to forget the disturbance
of their peace,” thinks Marco, even as he understands
that there is a lot the powers-that-be are not telling: “Grandma
was in some serious shit—exactly what kind of shit was the mystery
in need of solving.”
A whopping and disturbing cliffhanger serves as the conclusion.
Readers will anxiously await the sequel. (Thriller. 14-18)
ZELDA THE VARIGOOSE
Loth, Sebastian
Translated by Wilson, David Henry
Illus. by Loth, Sebastian
NorthSouth (32 pp.)
$16.95 | Jun. 1, 2012
978-0-7358-4076-8
Fanciful new animals are introduced in pictures and simple poetry.
When is a goose not just a goose When she’s crossed
with another, unlikely animal. Or maybe Zelda’s just pretending.
A clear overlay produces a fantastic new creature on each
right-hand page, and a two-line verse on each left-hand page
describes it: “GOOSEPHANT. If I caught a cold, then I suppose
/ I’d need an hour to blow my nose.” Opposite, the yellow
goose’s body and wing are clearly visible, with elephant legs,
ears, tail and trunk overlaid. Readers then get the extra fun of
pulling back the clear layer to reveal Zelda the goose beneath.
There are 11 animals in all, including a Goosnail, Chamelegoose
(whose verse is backgrounded by mottled green camouflage),
Googiraffe, Goosey Bee (with a honeycomb background),
Goosey Glowworm (“I’m not afraid to go out at night”), Goosquid
(“I can squirt out clouds of ink. / Good to hide in—not
to drink!”), Goosey Peacock, Ladybug Goose, Whalegoose, and
860 | 15 april 2012 | children’s & teen | kirkusreviews.com |
| kirkusreviews.com | children’s & teen | 15 april 2012 | 861