Shawn Thomas Odyssey

I have had this book on my TBR pile for a long time and was excited to finally read it. This was an okay middle grade story set on a magical street located off of New York City. It was okay but not great.

I enjoyed some of the creative ideas and settings but didn't find the story or characters all that engaging. At points so many fantastical things are thrown at the reader that it makes both the characters and setting hard to picture and follow. You never really get a chance to know and engage with the characters all that well. The “mystery” is also fairly predictable.

Overall this was an okay middle grade fantasy read. There are some fun and creative ideas in here; but I didn’t find the story very engaging and thought the mystery was fairly predictable.… (mais)

Once again I’ve stumbled into the middle of a series and have enjoyed myself so much that I’m going to have to go back and read the earlier titles I missed. The Magician’s Dream is the third book in the Oona Crate series. Oona is an apprentice wizard living on Dark Street, a mysterious, revolving realm bridging the world of man (“of humans,” Oona would insist) and the world of the faeries. These are not the fluttery beauties that the word faerie often conjures. These are powerful, malevolent, battle-ready beings. Centuries ago, a wizard locked the gates that let the faeries travel down Dark Street to the world of man (“of humans,” Oona would insist again). Oona is a teen in training to become the next wizard charged with keeping that gateway sealed.

While the publisher is marketing this as a book for late elementary/early middle readers, it’s fun enough to entertain readers on either side of that range. The world of Dark Street is vividly portrayed with a wealth of images to fuel one’s own imagination: a library that is an indoor forest with books spread out along the trees’ branches; magic wallpaper and carpeting that seem like living presences; a dragon-bone desk that can come to life.

Oona is a young feminist, a rebel against the unquestioned male authority that governs Dark Street. She supports the first female candidate for the Dark Street Council; she isn’t afraid to take the lead in a budding romance with a young librarian apprenticing to become an expert in magical law. She’s also a detective, determined to find her father’s killer and to outdo Inspector White, who took over her father’s post as head of Dark Street Police after her father’s murder.

We live in a literary age with a multitude of wizards, but Oona is a delightful, original addition to the bunch. Instead of a wand, she uses her father’s magnifying glass. Her history tutor is a talking raven named Deacon. When you need a bit of magic, Oona’s just the girl to turn to—regardless of the age you are.… (mais)

This is a sequel, with additional books to come in the series. Oona and her uncle the magician live on Dark Street, a place between the world of humans and the world of faeries. She enters into the Magician's Tower Contest that is held every five years and one which no one has managed to win in the five hundred years of its existence, but she is distracted by the disappearance of a magic punchbowl that its owner claims can answer any question. Oona wants to ask it if she really was to blame three years ago when a magic spell went horribly wrong, resulting in the death of her mother and sister. Not everyone turns out to be who they say they are, and the contest and the mystery of the punchbowl becomes a struggle of life and death for Oona.… (mais)