Kendra and Seth start to receive their training from three experts on how to protect the Preserve.
What I Liked
The three experts and their specializations are pretty cool, all with slightly different skills and personalities. And the finale seems like a solid “Indiana Jones” challenge.
What I Didn’t Like
The book is a lot slower than the first, and while Seth isn’t quite as annoying, the ending reads almost like a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (series of chambers, different puzzles) and the main protagonist, Kendra, is relatively an observer for most of it while others do the heavy lifting.
Kendra and her brother Seth protect a magical preserve against dark forces.
What I Liked
Like most stories of youth being exposed to magic for the first time, there is a healthy skepticism like they’re being punked. What differed in this one is that the initial intro is one mostly of light and wonder, not darkness and fear. Kendra and Seth want to explore and see all the wonderful things, without first encountering people trying to kill them. The darkness is revealed more slowly. And so you share that burgeoning love and mystery. I also like the funnier moments, a bit like the humour in some of the Percy Jackson series more so than the constant impending doom in Harry Potter.
What I Didn’t Like
Seth is annoying. Most of the early plot developments are because he doesn’t listen to his grandfather, constantly screws something up, and even after suffering consequences, does similar things again. Separate from being annoying, it seems incredibly repetitive too.
The Bottom Line
A nice preserve to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
A fictionalized “true” story of the author observing a brilliant detective attempting to solve the murder of a woman who went to plan her funeral and was murdered the same day.
What I Liked
The premise of the story of the woman planning her funeral and then being murdered was a great Agatha Christie-style plot, more so than Sherlock Holmes. Yet the writing arrangement of Horowitz as Watson and Hawthrone as Holmes works reasonably well, even if Hawthorne is more prickly and flawed. Lots of different characters to meet. While I figured out several red herrings and had most of the clues assembled at the end, I didn’t quite interpret them the way the final answer is given.
What I Didn’t Like
There are three things in the story that bothered me. First and foremost, Horowitz has inserted himself as the narrator as if the premise is real. It’s a bit gimmicky, but if you ignore that, and treat it as if it was a fictionalized person, the premise works okay but not great. Yet, as a result, he pulls in various people he knows in real life, and, of course, they are treated with kid gloves. All positive words, meeting people like Spielberg for instance, so no chance he might be sued. Second, Horowitz or his fictionalized version is downright whiny. He complains about everything. He reads like a self-righteous child in many places. Third, there is a premise introduced very early on, and not only does it not play out the way it was described, the real explanation is done only through assumption and speculation. It didn’t feel like the book played fair with that clue or the character. Equally, the ending has a lot of exposition that implies “this is the only explanation” but there were several other equally plausible solutions.
The Bottom Line
Interesting premise, average mystery, soft ending.
The year is 1942, and Jack Delaney is working as a writer for the local radio station where weird things happen, like actors going missing and potential German spies hiding in plain sight.
What I Liked
The story starts off confused, and a hint of someone in trouble. Delaney has to escape a chain gang to help a woman he loves, even if she is already spoken for in his mind. And the trail leads to a radio station in a coastal town where he gets work. At that point, the story is three-fold — a mystery involving German spies, a love story of sorts, and him learning about the radio business as a writer. The radio business part is awesome.
What I Didn’t Like
The German mystery is confused and the love story doubly so. Most of it makes very little sense and is more “hinted at” than “made real”.
A blackout hits New Jersey and two kids try to figure out both how it happened and how to fix it.
What I Liked
The level is middle-grade and moves along at an okay pace. The cause of the blackout comes down to computers, and the solution is relatively straightforward without seeming too simplistic. Good interesting characters, for the most part.
What I Didn’t Like
There’s a plot hole in the solution — without revealing spoilers, the solution might fix homes and businesses but it wouldn’t have fixed the street lights, for instance — but it’s a small quibble. The real challenge is the level of exposition that is frequently dumped heavily into the story. Since they’re kids, they don’t know the “details” so everything they find out, they ask someone to explain it to them. At length. It really slows down the pace. The book tries to ramp it up a bit with a bit of suspense and violence, but they seem more amateurish than threatening.
The Bottom Line
Okay, but expect most middle-graders would find it slow.
