Rule #1: Stay the Udlast away from the Dragons.Rule #2: Defy the Council or die trying.Where does it end? Over a generation ago, the Council ordered the systematic extermination of the magic wielding Runic race. A few Dragonics refused to participate and instead demanded justice. But their call to defiance came too late; no Runics survived. Now, in A. Wrighton‘s fantasy “Defiance: Dragonics & Runics Part I,” those against the Council’s oppressive reign have long…
For Mattie O’Reilly, who was eleven and just a frizzy red-haired fifth grader, magic wasn’t even a remote possibility. Not in the basement of Sears in Hackensack, New Jersey anyway. But October 10, 1968, would end very differently than it began. In “Mattie Spyglass and the 8 Magic Stones,” the debut adventure novel by Shoba Sreenivasan, a mysterious antique spyglass chooses Mattie as its mistress, and hurls Mattie and her friends Eddie and Geeta, and…
Fiona Thorn is an ornery orphan – with an expertise in explosives. When Fiona sets out to rescue her imprisoned friend Jaydin Rowan, she wants nothing more than a few sleeping guards and a satchel full of Blast. What she gets is a run-in with three bickering princesses that puts all four girls on the wrong side of a locked dungeon door. So now, in Jen Barton‘s book for young readers, “Fiona Thorn and the…
A group of adolescents comes together from across the world to study the finer points of diplomacy and governance with the Circle of Tivedon, the teaching elders at the school. But soon there are troubled tidings — an ancient evil is on the rise, threatening to plunge the land into darkness once again. This triggers a series of events that eventually leads to a hasty flight of the students under cover of darkness. With foes…
It’s been called “a psychedelic fairytale for the modern age.” David David Katzman‘s second novel “A Greater Monster” is a darkly poetic tale that takes you on a trip – oh, yes, a trip – into a radically twisted alternate reality, which reflects civilization like a funhouse mirror. Along the way, you’ll encounter sphinxes, gods, living skeletons, witches, and quite possibly the strangest circus ever imagined. And we’re not talking about the Republican National Convention…
Ivy Thorn is a teenager, and a military brat, who’s just gone through yet another move, as the new book by Emily Casey opens. Now, Ivy has always been afraid of mirrors, but she never knew why. Then one of them sucks her into the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast.” Now all she wants is to find her way home. But when Ivy tries to escape, she breaks the wrong spell. Beast is not…
