Author: Maureen Doyle McQuerry
Publisher: Abrams Books
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
This novel was presented in an unusual fashion in Adobe Digital Editions - it's all double paged meaning that you need to have the app full screen in order to have the text large enough to read comfortably. There was an inexplicable prologue which I skipped. My position is that if the author doesn't think it important enough to include in the main body of the novel, then I don't think it important enough to expend time upon. I've never regretted skipping a prologue. I got about a quarter the way through the novel and had to give up on it.
The book consists of 337 pages of widely-spaced text, so it's not a long novel - nor is it very kind to trees formatted in that way. I'd recommend the ebook version if you're going to buy this. The last chapter is amusingly titled "A New Chapter". I had forgotten that the blurb I read clearly stated that this was book two, so I started this thinking it was book one. There is nothing in the book to indicate it's book two until you start reading it, when it becomes evident that the story is already well under way
This begs the question as to why a prologue was even thought necessary - wasn't book one the prologue?! There's no indication anywhere as to what book it is or even if it's part of a series, but it quite evidently is. So note that I am not a fan of series, and I am coming into this having missed book one. This obvious affects my view of the story.
That said, I found it not less confusing the more I read but more confusing! I quickly lost interest because I really didn't understand the point of people's actions. Maybe if I had read book one it might have been better, but I doubt it because if book one had been written like this, then I never would have wanted to progress to book two anyway!
We begin with Jessica, who is evidently in a magical market. She had gone there with her friend Peter, and with Sarah and Timothy Maxwell to get some special ointment for their mother. Why it took four of them goes unexplained, but they'd had a run-in with the Animal Tamer - a wizard of some sort - who had turned Sarah into a "white ermine". That's a tautology; ermines are by definition white. They're actually white stoats - stoats with a winter coat. Peter had then caused a distraction allowing Jessica to free Sarah (in her stoat form) and the Animal Tamer had reacted by turning Peter into a weasel!
How do you tell the difference between a weasel and stoat? Well here's the secret: A weasel is so weasely distinguished, and a stoat is stoatally different. Got that? Okay, let's move along. Actually, I lied. Peter was turned into a ferret, but if I'd said that, I couldn't have told that joke. I'm glad you ferreted the truth out of me though.
Now Jessica's being attacked by a goose, which gooses her from behind. It certainly isn't her day, but fortunately, her aunt Rosemary - or is it Cerridwyn? - is close at hand. Like I said, chapter one takes off like it's a sequel, but with no scene setting as it goes, so coming into it as I did, it was moderately confusing to begin with. Superficially, it felt like we were hitting the ground running, but there was more mis-hitting and stumbling than anything else.
The worst thing about the novel though was how derivative it is. When I read the blurb I thought it odd that these kids were going to Scotland to look for Irish treasures, but I love Scotland and so I thought it definitely worth a look, but it took forever to get to that point. In fact, in the portion I read, which was about the first third, it didn't happen, which was a big yawn for me.
Instead, there was a huge battle in which the very trees are being awoken just like in Lord of the Rings, and they're fighting foul creatures coming from underground - just like in Lord of the Rings, except that in this case it isn't Orcs, but a giant toad.
The characters seemed unfortunately reminiscent of Harry Potter in some regards. There was even a worm-tail character who was a rat-catcher. I don't know if that was intentionally humorous or was merely ironic. He couldn't turn himself into a rat, but he was turned into one by the Animal Tamer.
The Animal Tamer's real name is Balor, but just like with Lord Voldemort - who actually never was a lord - no one likes to use his real name. We got to spend very little time with the "ermine" and with the ferret, following them on their non-adventures. The ferret, which is held in a burlap bag, tries to escape through a hole the "size of a quarter", which would be impossible unless quarters in this land are significantly larger than American quarters, or maybe the sack stretched. Hobs - which are what male ferrets are called, are larger than jills (the female ferret) so I assumed Peter was a hob, but who knows?
After this it became really confusing with one new character after another showing up, and there was fighting and blood and gore, and it simply wasn't interesting or entertaining to me. I had no investment in any of the characters and really didn't care whether the market had a king or not. There was the recovery of a valuable piece of adornment, rather like the diadem in Harry Potter, except that this was a necklace and was not sought so it could be destroyed.
One thing that is consistent in this kind of a novel is that some ill-prepared kid is thrust into a position of crucial importance and wins out, whereas all the powerful people - the wizards or whatever, steer clear of the danger and do precious little but speak in riddles. It's nonsensical and offers no sort of decent foundation upon which to build a solid story. For me, this is why this one failed to get there, and why I can't recommend it. There is no 'there' there. Your mileage may differ.
