A Review of Black Heart by Holly Black

Have you read Black's books, White Cat and Red Glove? No? Then stop reading this review and go do that.

Ready now? Of course, you had to read the other two books first, not just to avoid the perils of spoilers, but because this trilogy builds beautifully, and diving into the last book unprepared simply does not do Cassel Sharpe's overall story arc justice.

Okay. In Holly Black's alternate reality, certain people are curse workers—and naturally, they take on the role of crime families. Different curse workers have different gifts, such as changing people's memories, making people do what they want, and flat-out killing people. Everyone wears gloves, both as a fashion statement and because curses require skin-to-skin contact. Probably the best detail of all is that curse working affects the workers physically. For example, killing someone with a curse might mean losing a finger, as in the case of Cassel's death worker grandfather.

At first, Cassel doesn't even think he's a curse worker, though other people in his family are. That's before he finds out he has turned the love of his life, Lila, into a cat. Or that his ruthless older brothers have been using his special gifts and wiping his memory. Turns out Cassel is that rare thing, a transformation worker. He can turn something or someone into something else—completely and permanently, if he wants. Cassel frees Lila and she falls in love with him, but he discovers that her love has been manufactured by his mother. Then Cassel's older brother is killed, and he has to decide whether to work with the mob or the FBI.

As Book 3 begins, Lila is still avoiding Cassel because she learned the truth about her supposed feelings for him. Cassel and his brother Barron are now working for the FBI—sort of. Cassel doesn't really trust anyone. And now Governor Patton, who was magically conned by Cassel's mother, is trying to lock up all the curse workers. On the school side of things, Cassel's best friend Sam is having trouble with his girlfriend Daneca, who suspects the truth about Cassel. A girl named Mina asks Cassel for help, but Cassel smells a rat. Then there's Cassel's devious mother, who is being held hostage by Lila's mob boss father until Cassel can find a missing piece of valuable jewelry. The Feds want Cassel's help, too, but is that all they want? And can Lila forgive him before he gets himself killed?

Black Heart is a darkly rollicking page-turner for readers of urban fantasy and paranormal romance. The author has a way with words, and the touches of humor serve to counterbalance the essential darkness of the plot. Here's a look at Cassel in his boarding school dorm room with Sam. Cassel has just come back from a fight with a guy who dropped his gun:

I shoulder my way into the closet and step up onto a sagging box. Then, reaching under my jacket, I pull out the gun, and tape it with a roll of duct tape high on the back wall, above my clothes. I arrange a jumble of old books on the shelf just below it to block it from view.

"You've got to be kidding me," Sam says.

He clearly watched the whole thing. I didn't even hear him get up. I must be losing my touch.

"It's not mine," I say. "I didn't know what to do with it."

"How about getting rid of it?" he says, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "That's a gun. A gun, Cassel. A guuuuuuuun."

"Yeah." I climb down, hopping off the box and landing with a thud. "I know. I will. I just didn't have time. Tomorrow, I promise."

"How much time does it take to throw a gun in a dumpster?"

"I really wish you would stop saying the word 'gun,'" I say, flopping down onto my own bed and reaching for my laptop.

I like the way Cassel is very much a teenage boy, smart and clueless at the same time. He gets in trouble, bumbles a bit, somehow survives, and manages to figure out what he really wants in life. Holly Black has a great ear for humans, especially those of the teenage variety. Cassel is an imperfect hero, but that makes reading his story all the more enjoyable.

Note for Worried Parents: This trilogy is for teens and includes violence, sex, and criminal behavior. All three topics are presented appropriately enough in context, but the books are probably best suited for high school students. Then again, if you've been letting your 10-year-old read The Hunger Games, go right ahead.

A Review of The Silver Bowl by Diane Stanley

There's a touch of Upstairs, Downstairs in this book about a roughly raised poor girl who is sent to the king's castle to work as a scullery maid when she is only seven. Little by little, she learns to get along with the castle staff and do a good job. Her one encounter with royalty makes it clear that princes are snobs. But she rolls up her sleeves and gets back to scrubbing the pots, encouraged in her endeavors by her friend Tobias, the donkey boy. In time Molly is promoted to silver polisher, and her life path seems plain. She ignores the fact that she sometimes sees visions of people's deaths, telling herself she simply imagined them.

Except—it turns out the royal family has been cursed, and the irrepressible Molly learns she has a strange connection to the events of the cursing. But first the king and his sons suffer greatly, until the entire castle worries what might happen next. And Molly starts seeing more visions in the great silver bowl she has been assigned to polish by Thomas, the keeper of the castle's silver. Molly had believed what she was told as a child, that her mother was crazy, but was she really just a witch? And is Molly a witch, too?

When things get bad for Alaric, Molly and Tobias take a series of huge risks to protect him. I like the way their cleverness and practicality makes them perfectly capable of handling a horrible situation. Under pressure, Molly and her friend's qualities shine like polished silver.

Part mystery, part fairy tale, part reconciliation of class differences, The Silver Bowl is altogether satisfying as the pieces come together. Molly uses her visions from the bowl to help solve the mystery, though she has difficulty figuring out who the true villain might be, to her great peril. Fortunately, Tobias is there to help, and even Alaric begins to contribute usefully and a bit more humbly to their plans. Stanley builds suspense as Alaric becomes the last royal standing and his common-born friends turn out to be the only ones capable of saving his throne from his greedy cousins and the shadowy figure of the curse-maker.

Here's an excerpt from a scene early in the book, when Tobias takes Molly upstairs in the castle:

"We must be silent as ghosts, Molly. And if one of them should come into the room, look down in a very respectful manner, and do not meet their eyes, for they don't wish to be reminded we are about."

"Why? If I had a castle full of servants, I'd be glad to be reminded of it."

"Well, they are not. We are as common as lice to them, and just as interesting."

I enjoyed the interactions between Molly and Tobias, which ripen rather unsurprisingly late in the book into romance, though that's not a major focus. Stanley does leave the door open for a sequel featuring these two characters.

I wasn't quite sold on the denouement, but for the most part, this book flows nicely. And of course, Alaric learns his lesson as both his life and his kingdom are saved by two of his lowly servants. Yet Diane Stanley's message doesn't distract from the sweep of her storytelling in this well-written fantasy. I recommend it to fans of books like Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted, Shannon Hale's Princess Academy, and Jessica Day George's Princess of the Midnight Ball.

Note for Worried Parents: The Silver Bowl is being marketed for teens (YA), perhaps because of a handful of grisly deaths and some peril, along with the eventual ages of the protagonists, but it reads as upper middle grade (MG) to me.

A Review of Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus by R.L. LaFevers

You know those kids that really should be CEOs of multinational corporations at the age of seven? The ones who look with disdain at the foolish adults who haven't sufficient sense to bow to their wills? The ones you're nice to now because they'll be running for president or prime minister, if not queen, in a couple of decades—and winning?

Yes, Theodosia Throckmorten is one of those kids. Not because she's bossy or precocious in a sitcom kind of way, but because she knows what she knows and doesn't suffer fools gladly. Theodosia is busy, and adults seem to have a tendency to get in her way. As she puts it in the first two sentences: "I hate being followed. I especially hate being followed by a bunch of lunatic adults playing at being occultists."

In Book 3, Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus, our 11-year-old heroine continues using her knowledge of Egyptian magic to remove the curses from objects shipped to the Museum of Legends and Antiquities that her parents run. The year is 1906, mummies are all the rage in London, and sometimes they're even real.

The adults interfering with Theodosia are a motley crew. We have the slightly deranged Aloysius Trawley and the Black Sunners, who seem pretty sure Theodosia is a reincarnated goddess and are cranky about her lack of willingness to come around and share her supposed power. Then we have the traitor Admiral Sopcoate and his cronies, who escaped in the last book and now show up demanding the strange artifact Theodosia's brother Henry has discovered in the museum basement—the Emerald Tablet. Soon it seems everyone is after the tablet, including the mysterious and possibly fraudulent Egyptian magician, Awi Bubu. Theodosia's mentor, Lord Wigmere, is not helping matters any. He keeps trying to pressure her into working with his representative at the museum, Clive Fagenbush, who gets on Theodosia's last nerve.

Really, at this point, I don't mind what shenanigans Theodosia is up to; I just like watching her in action. Whether she's putting a sand-in-the-pants curse on Fagenbush or arranging a secret funeral, it's all about this character's stern dedication to ridding the museum of ancient spells and keeping the bad guys away from objects of power.

LaFever's humor adds a great deal to the books. For example, she has a lot of fun contrasting Theodosia's idea of proper (read: expedient) behavior with what the adults around her think a young lady should be doing. (It doesn't hurt that Theodosia's absent-minded Egyptologist parents never dream that their daughter could be getting herself into quite so much trouble.) Former pickpocket Sticky Will and his brothers continue to add comic relief, along with some much-needed assistance.

As in the previous books, Yoko Tanaka's occasional black-and-white illustrations add to the author's storytelling.

This book reveals intriguing information about Theodosia's ability to sense magic, especially curses, which moves the series arc forward. Although the problems in Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus are solved by the end of the book, we also learn the direction the next installment will take. I look forward to reading Book Four in this clever, rambunctious series.

I do recommend reading books one and two before you tackle LaFevers' latest. While you can catch the gist of what's going on by simply diving in, the story will be that much more effective if you backtrack to read Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos and Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris first. For one thing, young readers will be able to steep themselves in the nuances of Egyptian magical lore, as studied and applied by our heroine.

I'll just end by mentioning that I like how School Library Journal puts it on the jacket flap of the new book: Theodosia is "a combination of Nancy Drew and Indiana Jones."

Note for Worried Parents: There's some occult Egyptian magic in these books, including a case of haunting and a mild ghost removal ceremony, if that sort of thing concerns you.

Update: At writer Ellen Oh's blog, her daughter Summer has done a very nice interview with R.L. LaFevers about this book and the Theodosia series.