Here we go!

This story opens with the female main character helping her father, the captain of a ship who rescues “passengers.” The captain has immense magical powers in a world built on a world spawned from a successful slave uprising on a ship in the middle passage. All the different parts of this world fit so well together in one of the most cohesive fantastical worlds I have seen inspired by this shameful age of history. (Granted, with humans running the show, it’s difficult to find any history free of horrific acts.) While not overly descriptive and while managing to avoid info-dumping, Randall establishes the mythos of this world through the prologue told as if by a griot. I really enjoyed this story and think that middle school students would as well even if some of the deeply embedded allusions may go over their heads. The only thing that brings my rating down a notch is the break-neck pace of the plot. Occasionally, things moved just a tad too quickly, leaving the reader with a bit of proverbial whiplash as well as not leaving time for some of the well-crafted illusions to sink in and have full effect.

I really wanted to enjoy this book which had such a promising premise. In this world, quite similar to our own, the Benson family has the ability to hop into any board game they want. The problem for twins, Rhett and Nash, is that they have no idea thanks to their matter’s hyper-vigilance around keeping them away from any boardgame and even close proximity to them. Their world turns completely upside down when they get called into the office at school to learn that their mother has been in an accident and their estranged grandfather will be picking them up. From there, the grandfather plunges the twins into his world of boardgame hopping in an attempt to save their mother who has somehow been kidnapped into one. While the grandfather starts by saying he’s going to trian them, it quickly devolves as he becomes stuck in a dangerous game and now the twins have to save both him and their mom who turns out to be trapped in a video game version of a destroyed board game. If this plot has started to sound a bit absurd, that just scratches the surface of the profound absurdity of this book. While I can conceive of the possibility of a board game world existing for some, mainly deck-building games, my mind struggle dto conceive of how this conceit would actually work. Video games make much more sense for this concept which is why the author’s note – in which Martin derides the “addictive” nature of video games- explains why she had to go to such lengths to try to make a scrap of an idea work for a full length novel. Spoiler alert: it did not. On top of that, the author appeared to shun all, or most, transitions between scenes as if she had a few already framed in her mind, wrote those, and then went back and tried to make them fit together. One time I went back and read through the pages twice before realizing that , no, I did not miss anything. She simply plunged the reader into a completely different environment for a couple pages before explaining how we got there. I wish I could recommend this book, especially since it centers a male protagonist, not as common for middle grade novels, in an adventerous setting, that many of my middle schoolers would enjoy. Unfortunately, I think many of them would end up confused about what actually happened and a bit unsatisfied by the ending. I know I was.

I had reasonably high hopes for this novel after my pleasant 4 star experience with Meg Shaffer’s traditional debut, The Wishing Game as well as the fact that publicity surrounding this novel centered around the idea of Narnia for adults. Seeing as how the Chronicles of Narnia formed my introduction to fantasy, my most loved genre, I hoped that this book would hold a little bit of nostalgia. Unfortunately, aside from several overt and attempted covert allusions to C. S. Lewis and the series, this book completely lacked Narnia vibes. My favorite part of the book was the opening, told from the point of view of a character who never appears in the book again. The writing drew me in as the story opened on the discovery of two boys, long presumped forever lost after a six month disappearince. When this chapter ends, the reader finds themselves fifteen years after the prologue, in the point of view of a 23 year old woman – who often sounds like a vapid teenager – attempting to speak to a man, who specializes in the search for missing girls and women, about the long ago disappearance of a half-sister that she, the 23 year old, just discovered after her adoptive mother died. Obviously, the man she approaches like he’s her celebrity crush, is one of those two no longer missing boys from the prologue. He no longer speaks to the other boy who remembers nothing of their missing time. Aside from a little complexity to set up this meeting, a reasonable suspension of disbelief, Shaffer established an intriguing premise. From there, however, the story goes off the rails for me, not a good sign when 80% of the book remains. Part of this stems from the audiobook narrator’s inflection choices for Jeremy, the former lost boy, and Emilie, the girl searching for her sister. I will nto get into the details since that would involve parts of the plot not mentioned in the synopsis. However, I will describe the incongruity of some of the inflection choices as well as the author’s word choice where most would expect serious discussions or brusque non-answers after bringing up past trauma, not witty or sarcastic flirting-like banter between two characters who are never romantic interests. Overall, the vibe felt off, especially through the parts in the “real” world which takes up more than half of the story. When I finished, I thought, “well that was a … book.” This makes at least two sophomore works that missed the mark from authors whose first work I enjoyed.

I went into this book with lower – and for me more realistic – expectations based on my experiences with Serpent and Dove, a frequent comp title, as well asm y own lower enjoyment for romance as a main plot. As I got into the book, I found myself pleasantly surprised by how engaged I was in the narrative. In this world, witches have been forced into hiding after an uprising two years prior against the reigning three witch queens. Public opinion had already started to turn against witches who in this world use blood to perform spells; the fresher the blood, the stronger the spell. Some, notably the witch queens, had started taking form those who gave no permission which slowly corrupts the witch. The main character, acting as the Crimson Moth, finds herself wracked with guilt over her “betrayal” of her adoptive witch grandmother and compelled to rescue as many witches as she can, especially after discovering that she herself is a witch. The male main character, also the brother of her best friend, works as a high ranking witch hunter obsessed with finding and eliminating the threat known as the Crimson Moth, especially in the light of several brutal killings near the site of witches she has helped liberate. Spoiler alert: the Crimson Moth isn’t responsible for the murders. Through a series of events, these characters start a courtship of sorts, her so she can have a source of intel to help rescue more witches, him so he can sus out whether or not she is or knows who is the Crimson Moth. This scenario made much more sense and was far more plausible than Serpent and Dove. For that reason, I could settle deeper into the narrative rather than turn off the more logical side of my brain to enjoy the reading experience. I found myself surprised by this and thus pleased as I guessed the reveals and watched them unfold. I definitely look forward to the sequel.

This book makes so much more sense when you read it after reading the first in the series. An obvious statement, I know, but I accidentally started reading the books out of order. On top of that, I ended up enjoying this book for more than. the first which could not make up its mind over whether it wanted to be a book about a cooking competition or one about a magical school. This entry leaned entirely into the magical school by sending Kyana, Ashley, and Russ to a magical training camp, a summer cap type situation set during Spring Break. Once there, a mystery, which started with some unusual events back home, unfolds and the three protagonists must solve it. The narrative also took a welcome new tone with the addition of Ashley’s perspective, which helped the narrative find balance. This cohesion definitely helped the narrative achieve success as well as incline my desire to pick up any sequel in this series that J. Elle may write.

I expected a much longer work when initially picking up this book. Even so, I enjoyed this 32 page short graphic story about a visit to the main character’s grandparents. Nhia, a quiet, introverted second generation Hmong immigrant, dreads a visit with her grandparents, not because she doesn’t like them but because she feels self-conscious about her inability to speak fluently in Hmong to her grandparents, thus severely limiting her ability to communicate with them. I found this story well-told and perfectly encapsulated in those 32 pages. I will likely seek out more books in this series.

By the time I started reading this book, a few months had passed since reading the synopsis, thus I went into the book knowing nothing more than its slight chance of making the Goodreads fantasy list, some positive reviews, and – after reading a little bit – the existence of the loved character of Flea. Logan created a highly complicated book with an intricate world and complex plot that kept me engaged the entire time. Even though I had to remind myself of what had just happened every time I resumed my read, that didn’t put me off. The plot revolves around a man – whose name I do not know how to spell because I read this as an audiobook – with a slightly disreputable past, discovering the death of his father and a note given to him by his father’s steward and through this plunged into an ever-growing multilayered conspiracy only partially solved by the end of the book. I loved the character of Flea, a pick pocket caught by the main character and folded into the growing found family which by the end of the book also includes an infamous thief – Flea’s idol – who can supposedly walk through walls. Did I understand everything in the narrative? No. Do I eagerly look forward to the sequel? Most definitely.