Review of Xander and the Pen: The Pen Series #2 – David Lawrence & Cherie Dignam

Xander buys a pen that gives him the power to improve his family’s fortunes, only to discover that power comes with its own problems.

Xander and the Pen is the story of a boy who loves to draw superheroes, and the pen he buys from a mysterious market stall. He soon learns that the pen has a magical whatever he draws, happens! At first the pen helps Xander improve his family’s fortunes, but there are many unintended consequences and soon everybody is angry at him.

\Xander sees that the power of the pen has changed him into somebody his sister and his friends despise. But how else to deal with the bullying Bruise Brothers and solve the mystery of the poisoned llamas? Can Xander win back the respect of his sister and friends without using the pen? Or will he succumb to the temptation of an easy fix?

Featuring hilarious illustrations, and with messages about bullying, family dynamics, disability and the environment, this is fast-paced, entertaining middle grade fiction that will resonate with kids everywhere. After all, who wouldn’t want to fix all their problems with the stroke of a pen.

Review of Xander and the Pen: The Pen Series #2

David Lawrence & Cherie Dignam

EK Books

Supplied by Fantail Communications

Reviewed by Jan Butterworth

Xander is an ordinary kid with two hardworking parents and a sister in a wheelchair after an accident.  The family is scraping by, his father goes fishing to supplement the family food.  He’s also an amateur treasure hunter, scouring beaches with his metal detector and dreaming of the day he’ll strike it rich.Xander loves drawing and he’s really good at it – especially super heroes.  He has two close friends he hangs out with and entertains them by drawing funny cartoons of events that he wants to happen.

Every school has its bullies and the ones at Xander’s are the Bruise Brothers.  One day he draws a cartoon of them being defeated by a superhero and they are furious, waiting till after school to beat him up.  They chase him to a market in town where fog suddenly rolls in, hiding Xander as he escapes them.  He finds some money as he ides and then finds an antique store where he is drawn to a pen.  It’s the exact amount he found and he buys it before leaving the market to head home and try out his new pen.   Unfortunately the Bruise Brothers spot Xander and drag him into the disabled loos, where they beat him up and flush his new pen down the toilet. Once home, he discovered the pen was back inn his pocket and happily went about using it.

Xander soon realised that the pictures he was drawing with the pen were coming true, he decided to draw some good things happening – like his sister running again, his dad finding treasure, himself winning a math competition.  But these good thing had unexpected consequences – his sister moving away, the family letting wealth go to their heads and losing themselves, hurting a friend.  He needs to fix things – mend his relationship with his sister, get his family functioning healthily again, and get his friends back. Xander has to find his way back to who he was before he bought the amazing pen.

This book is an enjoyable read that will appeal to tweens.  The story is illustrated with clever cartoonish drawings of the action – like Xander had done them!  Really looking forward to more of this series!

Review of Once Upon a Wickedness – Fleur Beale

Ten-year-old orphan Dance Violet might have had a short and troubled history, but it hasn’t dampened her warrior spirit – not in the slightest. And that’s a good thing, because something is rotten in her village, and no one else has the courage to try to put things right.

People have been disappearing overnight and the village children are left to fend for themselves under the tyrannical schoolteachers Murk and Misselthwaite. There are whispers that the trouble started ten years ago when a beautiful but wicked woman – ‘the golden-haired hellion’ – appeared at a wedding.
Dance has some powerful gifts that she’s only just beginning to discover, and while she knows it’s dangerous to ask questions, she’s determined to find this golden-haired hellion – even if it means getting disappeared.

When Dance finds her, the golden-haired hellion had better look out.

Review of Once Upon a Wickedness – Fleur Beale

Puffin

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Jacqui Smith

This is essentially a modern fairy tale. The setting is timeless, though the school that plays a major part in the story adds something of a Victorian flavour to it. It’s the story of Durance Vile, better known as Dance Violet, and what happens when the wise woman who has been her guardian passes away, and Dance has to go to school. In the way of such things, the teachers are horrible, the children brave, and behind it all is an evil that must be defeated before all can be put to rights. Oh, and there is a dragon.

The book is beautifully illustrated by Lily Uivel, and that does add to the charm. I did find the use of ‘happy thoughts’ a bit twee, but cynical old me is hardly the intended audience for this story, and I should think that the message of thinking positively is entirely appropriate for the older children it is meant for. Just make surely there is a dictionary handy for the child, and don’t over-think it.

Review of Ruby and The Pen – David Lawrence & Cherie Dignam

Ruby and the Pen is the story of a 12-year-old, cartoon-drawing girl who buys a pen from a mysterious market stall. She soon learns that the pen has a magical power: whatever she draws, happens! Initially the pen protects Ruby from the meanest girls at her new school, but over time the pen’s power becomes dangerous. Soon, Ruby has problems galore and one big question to be answered — should she fix all of her problems with the stroke of a pen?

Ruby and The Pen

David Lawrence & Cherie Dignam

Exisle Publishing

Supplied by Fantail Communications

Reviewed by Jan Butterworth

\Ruby is a talented artist like her late dad. Her mum’s latest dropkick boyfriend, Dodgy Dave, is paying for her to go to an exclusive boarding school – to give him and her mum more private time together. On one of her remaining nights Ruby slips out to do some busking – drawing cartoons of people for $10 each. With the weather turning cold and foggy, she decides to pack up and go home, after first exploring a local street market. Stumbling on a junk stall that is shrouded in mist, where a gold antique fountain pen catches her eye. It’s exactly the amount she made from busking and the wizened stallholder even gives her a free bottle of ink. Ruby hurries home to try out her find.

The next day Ruby leaves for boarding school by herself, excited by getting to travel on a plane for the first time. Hetherington Hall has several imposing buildings set in impressive manicured grounds and Ruby gets a cold welcome at the reception desk. Heading to the girls boarding house, she runs into a pair of teachers who instantly make her feel at home. That feeling didn’t last long when she met her boarding house mistress and some of the girls in her dormitory. Ruby finds a friend in a fellow bullied student, Fav, and takes refuge in her art, drawing cartoons with her new pen. After a particularly nasty bullying incident, she flees the boarding house and finds a thickly forested piece of land behind the school and befriends a rainbow patterned bird she names Chirpy.

Ruby uses the gold pen to draw things she wishes would happen to her bullies as a way to vent. Weirdly, they actually happen, so she draws one of herself saving the day in an unlikely scenario, which also happens. As others figure out Ruby’s drawings come true, the bullies quickly figure out out to mess with her. After one of her drawings has unexpected consequences, Fav pleads with her to stop using the gold pen. Ruby has bigger things to worry about though. Someone has bought the forested land behind the school and, plans to build on it.

Can Ruby and Chirpy save the day? And will the pen help or hinder them?

This was an entertaining read that is illustrated with clever drawings of the story. It was a little unrealistic – some of the characters were like caricatures and you knew who the bullies were straight away – but that just added to the fun! I really hope no teacher is as oblivious to bullying as some in these pages though. I look forward to the pens next adventure.

Review of Fire and Blood – George R.R. Martin, illustrated by Doug Wheatley

Set 300 years before the events in A Song of Ice and Fire, FIRE AND BLOOD is the definitive history of the Targaryens in Westeros as told by Archmaester Gyldayn, and chronicles the conquest that united the Seven Kingdoms under Targaryen rule through to the Dance of the Dragons: the Targaryen civil war that nearly ended their dynasty forever.

The thrilling history of the Targaryens comes to life in this masterly work by the author of A Song of Ice and Fire, the inspiration for HBO’s Game of Thrones. With all the fire and fury fans have come to expect from internationally bestselling author George R.R. Martin, this is the first volume of the definitive two-part history of the Targaryens in Westeros.

Centuries before the events of A Game of Thrones, House Targaryen – the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria – took up residence on Dragonstone. Fire and Blood begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart..

What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why was it so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What were Maegor the Cruel’s worst crimes? What was it like in Westeros when dragons ruled the skies? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel, and featuring more than eighty all-new black-and-white illustrations by artist Doug Wheatley.

Review of Fire and Blood – George R.R. Martin, illustrated by Doug Wheatley

Voyager

Supplied by Harper Collins New Zealand

Reviewed by Stephen Litten

“300 years before A Game of Thrones, dragons ruled Westeros…” Thus reads the blurb on the front cover of Fire and Blood. It is subtitled A History of the Targaryen Kings from Aegon the Conqueror to Aegon III. Which is about half the duration of the House of Targaryen kings.

From the subtitle, it can be guessed that while this volume is a story, a story that is almost as epic as the Silmarillion, like the latter it is also a history not a novel. With a timeframe of over 150 years there is just too much action for anything but the barest bones to be fleshed. Thus the narrative is vague on dialogue or appearances, shaky on motives, and ironclad on outcomes. It is also about 600 pages, replete with full or part page illustrations intermittently.

Having the story a history not a novel may not be to everyone’s taste, but it does allow the author several advantages. Primarily, plotting is easier. The cast of characters can also be pegged back to the bare essentials. And as this is a dynastic history we know who we are focussed on the Targaryens. What we also learn is the background of the alliance dynamics in Game of Thrones and why certain noble houses loathe and detest other houses. Thus Fire and Blood informs Game of Thrones. Naturally, parts of this new book have been turned into a television series.

I enjoyed this book. The illustrations added to experience. Definitely one for the home library if you are an epic fantasy fan.

Review of The Book of Night – Holly Black

In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences-but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings-and memories-but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden-a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms.

And sometimes, it has a life of its own.

Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires.

But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear-and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgangers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister-all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.

The Book of Night

Holly Black

Del Rey

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Jacqui Smith

I’m sorry, I’m not going to finish this book. It’s not a fun or entertaining read. Way too dark, too American, too alien (and not in a good way). I could not relate in any way to the protagonist (and what is this fashion for giving male names to female characters – it’s annoying and confusing).

It is a modern urban fantasy with a kind of dark magic associated with shadows that I thought sounded intriguing, but in the book, it did not make a whole lot of sense. Better world-building needed. This not the book for me, but your mileage may differ.

Review of Camp Jupiter Classified: A Probatio’s Journal – Rick Riordan

A brand-new official companion guide to the Rick Riordan books, set in the incredible world of Percy Jackson and The Trials of Apollo

Mysterious incidents are wreaking havoc throughout Camp Jupiter. And if the Romans don’t find out who -or what -is behind the episodes soon, the Twelfth Legion could implode. Suspicion falls on Claudia, the Fourth Cohort’s newest probatio. To find out the truth, see through Claudia’s eyes the crime scenes, and watch as the bizarre events unfold – even when she discovers a secret that holds the key to Camp Jupiter’s safety…

Camp Jupiter Classified: A Probatio’s Journal

Rick Riordan

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Maree Pavletich

“An Official Trials of Apollo companion book”, which means it takes place at the same time and in the same universe as Trials of Apollo but otherwise has nothing to do with them.

Claudia is a legacy of Mercury and a Probatio in the Fourth Cohort. She is really, really excited to be at Camp Jupiter as written in her journal, which makes up this book.

She is totally on board with all activities even though she has learnt the hard way about peeing before you put on your armour.

But all is not well at the Camp. It’s the February after Gaea’s defeat, and mysterious incidents are wreaking have throughout Camp Jupiter. The Twelfth Legion is under threat as discipline is weakening as what seem to be pranks and practical jokes and thefts keep happening.

Is the culprit Claudia, the Fourth Cohort’s newest Probatio? After all, the mischief began shortly after Claudia stumbled into camp. Plus, she’s a great-granddaughter of Mercury, the god of thieves and tricksters…

Who is responsible? It’s up to Camp Jupiter’s newest member to figure it out.

Claudia is a great character, clumsy but determined, I want to see more of her. I really enjoyed seeing through her eyes and guessing who the culprit is. Any ‘Trials of Apollo’ fan needs this journal on their shelf.

Review of Serpentine – Philip Pullman (illustrations by Tom Duxbury)

‘Lyra Silvertongue, you’re very welcome . . . Yes, I know your new name. Serafina Pekkala told me everything about your exploits’

Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon have left the events of His Dark Materials far behind.
In this snapshot of their forever-changed lives they return to the North to visit an old friend,
where we will learn that things are not exactly as they seem . . .

Serpentine

Philip Pullman (illustrations by Tom Duxbury)

Penguin

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Stephen Litten

LPra Silvertongue and Pantalaimon are in the region of Trollesund, accompanying a dig by Jordan College. Set after The Amber Spyglass, Lyra wants to talk to someone about her newfound “talent” – being able to separate from her daemon. Lyra wonders what the Witches would make of this.

Serpentine is set not long after The Amber Spyglass, and is about 70 pages long, though half of these are illustrations. Originally written as an auction piece for the UK National Theatre in 2004, this story raises several questions about Lyra and Pantalaimon’s relationship. And introduces a glimpse of ordinary folk who have been divorced from their daemon. Which leads inexorably toward The Secret Commonwealth.

Serpentine is similar to The Strange Library. Both are about the same length and illustrated. But for me the illustrations in Serpentine feel like they’d been tacked on, even though they fit the action in the story. The story is excellent. I thank Penguin New Zealand for the review copy.

Review of A Deadly Education: Lesson 1 of the Scholomance – Naomi Novik

From the leading talent in fantasy, a magical coming-of-age trilogy with a hilarious female anti-hero – a darker more intelligent Harry Potter for adults.

In the start of an all-new series, the bestselling author of Uprooted and Spinning Silver introduces you to a dangerous school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death – until one girl begins to rewrite its rules.

Enter  school of magic unlike any you have ever encountered.

There are no teachers, no holidays, friendships are purely strategic, and the odds of survival are never equal.

Once you’re inside, there are only two ways out: you graduate or you die.

El Higgins is uniquely prepared for the school’s many dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out untold millions – never mind easily destroy the countless monsters that prowl the school.

Except, she might accidentally kill all the other students, too. So El is trying her hardest not to use it… that is, unless she has no other choice.

Wry, witty, endlessly inventive, and mordantly funny – yet with a true depth and fierce justice at its heart – this enchanting novel reminds us that there are far more important things than mere survival.

Review of A Deadly Education: Lesson 1 of the Scholomance

Naomi Novik

Del Rey

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Maree Pavletich

This is not Hogwarts. If your class experiment isn’t done on time it animates and comes after you. It’s a very solid teaching technique. Basically you graduate or die trying. El Higgins should be fine with it, she has an affinity for dark magic and mass destruction but she doesn’t particularly want to wipe the school and all the students off the face of the earth. No matter how annoying some can be, especially the ones trying to poison her or date her. And would that guy Orion please stop saving her life? She is perfectly capable of doing that herself. El is determined to survive but she may have to make friends with people she cannot trust or stand, maybe. This sets up the next books. El is a little whiny but you still want to follow her story.

Review of The Tower of Nero: The trials of Apollo #5- Rick Riordan

It’s time to face the final trial . . .

The battle for Camp Jupiter is over. New Rome is safe. Tarquin and his army of the undead have been defeated. Somehow Apollo has made it out alive, with a little bit of help from the Hunters of Artemis.

But though the battle may have been won, the war is far from over.

Now Apollo and Meg must get ready for the final – and, let’s face it, probably fatal – adventure. They must face the last emperor, the terrifying Nero, and destroy him once and for all.

Can Apollo find his godly form again? Will Meg be able to face up to her troubled past? Destiny awaits . . .

The Tower of Nero: The trials of Apollo #5

Rick Riordan

Pufin

Supplied by Penguin Random House New Zealand

Reviewed by Maree Pavletich

Apollo annoyed Zeus and now he is a teenager named Lester on the mean streets of Manhattan. After overcoming many trials, but not his ego, and fighting and saving Camp Jupiter, with plenty of snark, Apollo and partner Meg are back in the city that never sleeps to do final battle with Nero. That Nero, fiddle and all. And then Python, Apollo’s sworn enemy (pardon the pun). If they win; Apollo will get his divinity back. If they lose, they die and humanity will suffer. Being humiliated isn’t the end it’s just the beginning.

If you get annoyed by irrepressible ego this book is not for you, however, it shows even gods can learn and although it may rife on the first Thor movie there is a lot more going on.

.Guards of Haven (omnibus edition; contains Wolf in the Fold, Guard Against Dishonour, and The Bones of Haven) By Simon R. Green Review of Guards of Haven: #4-#6 – Simon R. Green

He’s Hawk. She’s Fisher. They’re cops, patrolling the mean streets of the ancient city misnamed Haven, a sinister place where demons, thieves, sorcerers, and murderers own the night and anything can be bought-except justice.

Guards of Haven

(omnibus edition; contains Wolf in the Fold, Guard Against Dishonour, and The Bones of Haven)

Simon R. Green

Roc

Purchased from Auckland City Libraries Withdrawn

Reviewed by Jacqui Smith

During Covid-19 lockdown, some light entertainment was very much in order, and this fitted the bill perfectly. Maybe it’s because he’s just a year or two older than me, and from Bradford-on-Avon, a short distance from my home village in England, but I do find Simon Green’s prose to be eminently readable and his stories to be a whole lot of fun. He writes across the genre, from space opera to low and urban fantasy. I’m calling the Haven stories low fantasy because they’re gritty and grounded, in spite of a fair amount of quite high magic. Hawk and Fisher are captains in the guard of the city of Haven. They’re essentially cops, and their stories are the fantasy novel equivalent of the buddy-cop show. Only they’re married – which does break the trope that the male and female leads should be in a constant state of romantic tension.

This omnibus collects the fourth to sixth novels in the series, each being largely a standalone story. Of the three, the third is probably the most memorable, with a seriously knock-out climax. But all three are good reads, and highly entertaining stories. They’re never going to win any awards, but they will do what good fantasy does best, take the reader away from mundane reality – albeit to a world with its own problems. And if that’s what you need, enjoy. No spoilers.