Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Fantasy & Magic

FLOWERANTHA by Bek Castro – Childrens’ Intermediate Readers, Sword & Stone Fantasy, Magic & Fantasy

Beautiful and imaginative, Flowerantha is a magical tale of two young girls who fall through a portal into an unknown world. With the help of restless boy Mash and aspiring soldier Bushraal, Beverly and May Lynn must travel among rising tensions to make it home safe.

No visitors have traveled to Flowerantha since its last visitor turned corrupt and started a war ten years prior. Mash is a young tree dwelling boy who desires nothing more than to go to the strange land that the visitors come from. When Mash finds out there are visitors, he volunteers to help them get home with the intention of following them through the portal.

Getting Beverly and May Lynn home is not as simple as initially believed. Magic is weakening, and Bushraal, ready to prove his worth as a future soldier, sees Mash as a burdened addition to his quest. All must put their particular prejudices aside to keep Flowerantha off the brink of another war and to keep two innocent girls protected on their journey home.

Bek Castro is a skillful writer who excels at building a world that feels alive. Flowerantha is a world saturated with magic and is in everything from the flowers that cover the sprawling landscapes to the wishing abilities of its people. The success and beauty of this short novel come from its central theme that no matter if a family is small, big, or adopted, they are all still family. Loss of loved ones is also prevalent and is not simplified for the sake of young audiences.

Settle in a comfy car during a rainy spring day and learn all about the world of Flowerantha as the rain feeds the flowers outside.

Floweranta won First Place in the 2017 CIBAs for Early Readers, the Gertrude Warner Awards.

April 29, 2019
DARKNESS FALLS, Book Two of WINDHOLLOWS by Trayner Bane – Children’s Books, Fantasy & Magic, Sword & Sorcery

What would life be like if the air we breathe was slowly, consciously, being robbed of oxygen itself?

What if the dark side in all of us could be manipulated by a soulless fiend, converting us into unwilling weapons against our own people?

While Air of Vengeance, the first book in the Windhollows series dealt more with issues of overcoming differences, friendships and family, Darkness Falls is more of an adventure/quest: characters from the first book bent on vanquishing evil and saving friends and family…

Windhollows is an idyllic land populated with fantastical creatures, where its peoples live symbiotically, producing complementary air-like Essenses necessary for life. Its way of life is threatened by a brilliant, twisted genius who vows revenge on the people who rejected him because he was different, whose arsenal of weapons both rob the air people breathe and turns others into creatures whose purpose in life is to destroy the ones they once loved.

As the second book opens, Doctor Molskin, father of Billy, the hero of Volume 1, discovers that the breathable air in parts of Windhollows, is being robbed of some of its essential chemical makeup called Essense. He understands almost immediately that the problem has been created by his former assistant who now calls himself Rip Stinker, a brilliant but twisted soul whose dismissal from the doctor’s Essense labs has caused him to seek revenge against the doctor, his children and all “normal” Windhollows denizens.

Stinker was born a “bare pants,” children lacking Essense and therefore societal outcasts. His revenge has been to rob a group of healthy children from birth of their Essense, including Billy, turning them “bare pants.” More menacing, he has now created another weapon that can transform these same children into misshapen monsters seeking their own revenge for their flawed destiny.

Two stories alternate throughout most of the book. First is the quest to find and destroy Rip Stinker and his evil technology undertaken initially by Dr. Molskin, and eventually by his son Billy along with two friends. The other story is built around Skylar, the sweet, innocent young barepants girl who was the object of Billy’s infatuation in the first book. She and other “bare pants” have been wooed by Rip Stinker’s seductive message of regaining their full Essense but she has her doubts about what this Faustian bargain will yield.

Along the way to Rip Stinker’s castle, Skylar discovers she has a mysterious ability to talk to the wild animals that no one else has. Just as she is reveling in her new powers, she runs afoul of Rip Stinker’s technology that turns her into a monster similar to Stinker himself who now is ruled by a darkness within her that she never knew existed, and she now finds her waging a war within, of light versus the darkness, even as she joins Stinker and his nefarious plans.

How these two quests intersect becomes the race-to-the-finish theme of this admirable middle-grade fantasy novel.

Follow the links to read the Axe Breaker and Air of Vengeance Chanticleer Reviews!

February 6, 2018
AIR of VENGEANCE: WINDHOLLOWS, Book 1 by Trayner Bane – Children’s Book, Action/Adventure, Fantasy & Magic

Fantasy takes you to worlds that never were or never could be. Good fantasy lets you live in that alternate reality while linking you seamlessly to the realities, the frailties of the human condition.

Air of Vengeance is the first of a series of novels for middle-graders and young adults and succeeds on both levels.

In a faraway land called Windhollows, two races live side by side, symbiotically producing different gasses, or Essences necessary for sustaining their lives together. The ability to produce Essence also determines everyone’s place in society. As the book begins, with no ability to produce Essence, nine infants become pariahs or Bare Pants literally from the moment of their birth.

Their inability to produce Essence is no accident. Rip Stinker, a brilliant but twisted scientist, invents a weapon that destroys the babies’ ability to produce Essence as revenge against the father of one of them for acts he felt destroyed his life.

What is fantasy soon becomes tragedy. Billy, one of the children, grows up in a household where his mother all but despises him for being who he is. She divorces his father, who loves his child despite his issues and sustains him through his miserable childhood.

The other eight are all abandoned by their parents at birth and shuffled off to an orphanage. The fateful eight band together at the orphanage and form a friendship that protects them from the worst societal prejudice yet still suffer the effects of their parents’ abandonment because they were different. They call themselves The Spent.

When Billy finally meets The Spent, he discovers the love and friendship circumstances denied him, even as they are jealous of him because he actually had parents. What they cannot foresee is the reappearance of Rip Stinker into their lives, whose plan is to take control of these emotionally and physically fragile young beings and turn them into monsters who will wreak havoc on society at large while staying under his control. Billy, who is initially overjoyed to join with them, sees Stinker as a Pied Piper and refuses to go along with Stinker’s nefarious plans.

Following the geography and the terminology of The Land of Windhollows is made easier by a map of the land, which resembles a bear claw, and a full glossary explaining the customs and languages of the various peoples who live there.

Bane treats his readers to various monsters, sci-fi weaponry, and a unique story that delivers an impact as its characters find themselves, variously, as outcast, then friends, and finally, divided by their version of what constitutes a better life: a path of goodness or a descent into darkness.

The novel ends on a cliff-hanger, with everyone’s destiny hanging in the balance.

Follow the links to read our reviews of Darkness Falls, and the third in the series, Axe Breaker.

November 29, 2017
The TOOTH COLLECTOR FAIRIES: Batina’s Best First Day by Denise Ditto – Children’s Literature, Early Reader Chapter Book, Fantasy & Magic

In Denise Ditto’s The Tooth Collector Fairies: Batina’s Best First Day, Batina wants one thing, to be the best Tooth Collector in all of Brushelot. Batina is a Tooth Fairy, and she can’t wait to get her first collecting assignment. Unfortunately, her first day doesn’t go quite as she planned. With her huge wings (three times the size of most of the fairies), she’s clumsy and a little awkward, but Batina has a job to do, collecting well-brushed teeth which can be turned magically into the rainbow dust that gives all of the fairies the ability to fly.

Despite the sneers of Jolene, an unhappy fairy who isn’t allowed to gather the precious teeth, Batina and her friends, Lulu and Lainey, can’t wait to begin their tasks, and each of them hopes to win the Best First Day ribbon awarded by Crown Mistress Molar. However, gathering the teeth from under the pillows of sleeping children is only the first step. When Batina returns with her prized first tooth, she must find a way to help the Tooth Inspector with a sabotaged conveyor belt and to fix the Super-Duper Magic Dust-Making Machine, or her first day might be ruined.

Batina’s story is one of determination and teamwork. Again and again, she must overcome her problems and celebrate her differences. Those huge wings often get in her way, but she remains undaunted. Instead, she finds a way to make the wings work in her favor. She also values the role of her friends and calls on them to help her solve the day’s problems. She recognizes the importance of their individual talents and even finds a way to help Jolene the bully, stop being a bully, and be her friend. The positive message of working together and embracing diversity makes this early-level chapter book, illustrated by Gabhor Utomo, shine.

Young and not-so-young readers alike will be happy to learn that Batina’s Best First Day is the first in the Tooth Collector Fairies series. There is more adventure waiting for all!

Author Denise Ditto not only loves writing children’s books, but she is also the Executive Director at Houston Writers House, a position she shares with her business partner Rebecca Nolen, and is the former Director of the Houston Writers Guild. A graduate of the University of Houston-Downtown, she has also published an award-winning short story. She lives in Texas, her home state, with her husband.

The Tooth Collector Fairies: Batina’s Best First Day won Grand Prize in CIBAs 2016 LITTLE PEEPS Awards for Children’s Literature. Follow this link to the Chanticleer Review of the second book in the series, Home from Decay Valley.

November 27, 2017
The DRY by Rebecca Nolen – Middle-Grade Fantasy/Adventure

This middle-grade fantasy sends a determined 12-year-old into a coal mine to find his missing father. Instead, he finds a phantasmagoria deep inside the earth, where first appearances can’t always be trusted. Heads-up to insectophobes: You’ll encounter plenty of creepies crawling through this spine-tingling adventure for middle graders.

It’s 1895 and years before child labor laws when Elliot Sweeney’s father fears for the town’s children, who are being sold to the company running the coal mine and never seen again. When his investigation swallows him up as well, Elliot, apprehensive but resolute, sets off to find him. Along the way, he picks up increasingly strange objects, companions, and stalkers: a watch that runs backward, a fierce girl named Lefty, a mysterious key, a blind burro named Beulah, a rat-faced mine recruiter. But that’s nothing compared to what Elliot and Lefty find once they enter the secret entrance to the boarded-up mine.

Like Tolkien’s Mines of Moria, this underground realm is palatial and studded with stone carvings and gems. And like Moria, within the cold beauty of this place called Penumbra is an ugly truth. Here Elliot and Lefty discover the lost children living in brutal conditions, mining gems for the cruel and vainglorious Wicked Prince of Every Place. Forced to work with their hands and without their shoes, the children’s blood gives power to the prince’s Water Moon, which absorbs all water, above and below ground. Hence, the title of the book, The Dry.

Elliot’s father is here too, weakened and powerless to defeat the vast army of insects and amphibians under the prince’s command: giant wasps, salamander servants, evil beetles, stinging caterpillars, and more.

And here is one of author Nolen’s greatest strengths: creating talking critters who not only possess unique personalities but suffer moments of existential crisis as well. Chief among these is Morrigan Wasp, Foundress of the United Vespid Kingdom, who imprisons Lefty but, after much soul-searching, realizes she is as enslaved by the prince as are the children. Morrigan helps Elliot escape to the other side of the mountain, where he finds the diminishing water queen Tosia, whose watery world is receding. Emboldened by his escape, Elliot rallies the creatures there—otters, dragonflies, horses—into the climatic, and inevitable war between good and evil.

Kids, teens, and fantasy-loving adults will find much to marvel over in this classic hero’s journey through a strange land that tests his courage at every turn. While the myriad of invertebrates may at times overwhelm the youngest readers, we encourage you not to fear; Elliot Sweeney is a bona-fide twelve-year-old hero, one who perseveres in spite of his fears and because of his unwavering love for his father, his new friend, and justice.

March 14, 2017