From Sue Bursztynski's The Great Raven book review blog, this:In this third instalment of the spin-off of the popular Quentaris shared-world series, a character from the original series is actually killed off, something that doesn’t usually happen in shared universes. As it happens in the prologue, it’s no secret...
(sundry stuff about what happens etc in here: JR)
In my opinion, this one is the best so far in the new series. We learn more about the characters and their feelings. The adventure is fast, but straightforward enough for the young readers for whom this is an introduction to fantasy. At the same time, there’s a murder in the first chapter; there’s no tiptoeing around the issue. What happens to the adult magicians is also scary.
But there’s still plenty of humour, maybe more than there's been since the end of the original series – and in the end, Fontagu is shown in a more positive light than before.
The only thing is, while you can probably get something out of this book without having read the others, you really do need to have read them to understand properly what’s going on. The series is no longer a lot of related but individual titles. There is still, however, a policy of using some of Australia’s top children’s writers to keep the quality up.
Recommended for children from mid-primary to early secondary school.
Yay! Thanks, Great Raven!
2 comments:
Glad you liked it! BTW, you'll also find it up on January Magazine, which gets 30,000 hits a day. Great Raven aka Sue Bursztynski
30,000 hits a day. Wowsers! Do they need copies of MY ENTIRE BACKLIST? :)
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