Likely to be read once at most; still, a handsomely designed offshoot from the Fantastic Beasts franchise.
The ruthless Grindelwald escapes to recruit more followers—one in particular—to his genocidal cause.
More a collectible spinoff than a fleshed-out story, the volume frames 120 quick-cut scenes of sparse dialogue and staging directions within swirling art nouveau–style borders, with plenty of similarly elegant spot art featuring occasional small images of magical creatures but no human figures. There are no stills from the 2018 film either, though director David Yates chimes in with a fluffy foreword, and the backmatter includes a vocabulary of staging abbreviations and partial cast and crew lists. The storyline, sketchy as it is in this form, picks up where the previous episode left off—readers will definitely need to have the established characters and events fresh in their minds to keep pace—and, after various side trips, gathers the ensemble (including token Muggle Jacob Kowalski) in Paris for a climactic dust-up beneath Père Lachaise cemetery. As usual in the Potterverse, agendas nearly always turn on family relations or class, so aside from a glancing reference to Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore’s being “closer than brothers” in their youths, the main developments here center on the star-crossed Muggle/magical romance of Jacob and Queenie and the (supposed) ancestry of powerful but ominously impressionable Credence Barebone. Stay, as the saying goes, tuned.
Likely to be read once at most; still, a handsomely designed offshoot from the Fantastic Beasts franchise. (Fantasy. 10-adult)Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-26389-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
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Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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