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Genre: Fantasy

Cutting Edge, but Get to the Point

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Fantasy authors have a league of their own. They play for various intramural teams, such as The Snarky Sendups (Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series), Cape-Clad Mind Explosions (Wheel of Time), Chemistry Set (Mistborn), or Space Cadets (Speaker for the Dead). Last but not least are the Gravitas Gang (Frank Herbert, C. S. Lewis). Tolkien is relaxing in a comfortable hole in the ground, still writing the rulebook. In Elvish.  With Assassin’s Apprentice, the first of the Farseer Trilogy, Robin Hobb has created a team rather than signed up for one. Most…

Bunnies vs. Bullies: The Green Ember Quadrilogy

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Parents or teachers whose concerns include finding safe literature for their brood of voracious young rabbits might wish to consider S. D. Smith’s The Green Ember series. Redwall it is not, but this quadrilogy offers a morally harmless adventure featuring talking bunnies with swords, which, like Brian Jacques’ better-known series, unfolds in a grounded universe with an epic fantasy feel but with little actual magic.  Heather and Picket Longtreader are brother and sister rabbits whose pastoral existence is turned upside-down when the war between good rabbits and an evil alliance…

Skullduggery, Published

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Skullduggery Pleasant is about as bodiless as its titular character. Notice I didn’t say “protagonist,” for Skullduggery, the skinless magical gumshoe on a quest to stop Serpine from bringing back the Nameless Ones, is not really the center of the story. He is, if you pardon the brittle pun, only its frame. The real honor goes to a plucky and wise twelve-year old named Stephanie Edgley.  Stephanie is mature beyond her years, preferring to read books and to correspond with her mysterious uncle rather than get swept up in the…

Elves, Boys, and Mean Girls

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Keeper of the Lost Cities, by Shannon Messenger, is a derivative but ultimately wholesome fantasy adventure written for a female audience. Now, you’ve so heard this kind of tween prose before, and you might be totally, absolutely mortified when you notice how much this book echoes the plots of other bestselling, middle grade fantasy books. But, like Sophie Foster, you’ll probably survive the ordeal. I mean just barely. And, while you’ll have to wade through the standard eco-gospel, and a lot of middle school melodrama to get there, the book…

The Hollow Heart of Merlin’s God

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Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy is a well-written, but ultimately troubling take on the Arthurian mythos . Stewart took great pains to give her historical fantasy a realistic, early Medieval backdrop, but her meticulous reinterpretation of the legendary source material has an agenda contrary to that material’s chivalric heart. Through the eyes and mouth of her ethically and spiritually ambiguous protagonist, the author exchanges the charming anachronism of Arthurian proto-chivalry for a far less believable Arthurian realpolitik. The result is an historically fascinating, but morally hollow series. Before delving in, let…

Readers Wanted: A Great Adventure Awaits

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M.L. Forman’s 5-book series, Adventurers Wanted, is a wonderful and fantastical journey, in the true sense of those words. What at first seems like a simple, perhaps even naïve, tale of a boy discovering a new life surprises the reader as it gradually delves deeper into the nuances of honor and responsibility, courage and cowardice, and many other aspects of human nature.  Slathbog’s Gold We enter the story, Slathbog’s Gold, as Alex Taylor, a fairly typical teenage boy, finds himself applying for a position as “adventurer” in a book shop…

The Candy Shop Wars

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The Candy Shop Wars is cheap American candy. Younger palettes may initially enjoy the easy thrills of magic sweets, but after a few chapters, most taste buds will be numb to the flavor and ready to move on to something more substantial. The core recipe for the story is unbalanced, and the magic candy action is little more than a superficial additive intended to mask the bland flavor. While the book does not contain anything that is blatantly inappropriate or offensive, there is little to recommend it.   The story centers…

The Enduring Tale of the Boy Who Lived

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Editor’s Note:  Admittedly, this has become a bit of a controversial series, both because of the books themselves, but also because of the subsequent development of the Harry Potter brand.  Please note the following.  First, we take the books as we find them on the shelf.  Second, our review of Harry Potter does not in any way indicate our views of any related sequels (in book or film form), which some avid Potter fans justifiably view as too dark and explicitly intertwined with the occult.  Are we surprised that the…