The Thickety, Book 3: Well of
Witches. By J.A. White. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $16.99.
A Dragon’s Guide #2: A Dragon’s
Guide to Making Your Human Smarter. By Laurence Yep & Joanne Ryder.
Illustrations by Mary GrandPré.
Crown. $16.99.
Darker than most
heroic-quest adventure fantasies for preteens, J.A. White’s The Thickety series further develops, in
the third of four planned novels, the themes presented in A Path Begins and The
Whispering Trees. These involve moral certainty and the impossibility of
attaining it; the difficulty of knowing for sure whether people are good or
evil, and the extent to which circumstances rather than predilections determine
what “good” and “evil” really mean; the pluses and minuses of obsessive
dedication to a cause; and the existence of real horror – and how one copes
with it. This last is worth emphasizing: there are some genuine scares in
White’s series, which means it will not be for everyone. Furthermore, the third
book, despite providing some backstory, does not really stand on its own as an
entry point to the series – readers need the first two to make sense of what
takes place here. That said, what happens in Well of Witches is that White uses timeworn, even clichéd themes,
such as the juxtaposition of outward and inner journeys, to enlarge and deepen
what is essentially a coming-of-age tale set in a world of witches (and witch
hunters). There is more emotional and ethical/moral depth to White’s books than
is usually found in heroic fantasy for younger readers (or older readers, for
that matter). Yet the characters, even to some extent central protagonist Kara
Westfall, remain “types” in many ways. Kara is 13 in Well of Witches and is traveling with Taff to find Grace, whose
spell on their father the two want reversed. To accomplish that, they must
rescue Grace herself (a hateful character when introduced in the first book)
from the well of this book’s title – and find it in their hearts to forgive
her. They also must encounter and deal with (and try to understand) ancient
mysteries and some of the new creatures that White introduces here, notably the
Faceless. And they must do all this against a backdrop in which a war on magic
is about to break out in the World. Other characters from the first two books
reappear here, from Kara’s friend and potential love interest Lucas to the evil
(but rather enthralling) Rygoth; a number of new characters are introduced,
too. In nearly 500 pages, White has plenty of space to showcase new creations
and bring existing characters along on the road to understanding and maturity. Well of Witches is a “journey” book,
while A Path Begins was a “homeland”
one and The Whispering Trees dealt
largely with death, regret and redemption. Kara has already been through a
great deal, including losing and regaining her own powers, by the time Well of Witches comes to its cliffhanger
close. A significant issue with this series is that the thematic differences
from book to book virtually mandate reading the entire grouping of novels from
start to finish to understand what is going on and what it all means – but the
fourth and last piece of the tetralogy has yet to be written. This means that
the frustration level for readers who finish Well of Witches will be even higher than usual when one is left at
a deliberately provocative and inconclusive point in the midst of an extended
adventure. The Thickety is certainly
a thought-provoking series, and it goes in some unusual directions for a
sequence intended for ages 10 and up. There is little value to reading Well of Witches on its own, but readers
who met Kara in White’s first series entry and stayed with her through the
second will find this third one, in which her assumptions about herself begin
to crumble along with her assumptions about the worlds she lives in, to be an
exciting if somewhat mystifying addition to the world of the World.
A far lighter series for a
slightly younger readership, ages 8-12, features the husband-and-wife writing
team of Laurence Yep and Joanne Ryder amusingly exploring the notion of magical
creatures living in a city that coexists invisibly with San Francisco – a city
in which, among other things, dragons (such as narrator Miss Drake) keep humans
(such as Winnie) as pets. Miss Drake has had a lot of pets – after all, she is 3,000 years old – but Winnie is (of
course) something special and unusual. There is some intermingling of magical
and non-magical creatures (here called
“naturals”) – for instance, at the Spriggs Academy, where Miss Drake sends
Winnie for school in A Dragon’s Guide to
Making Your Human Smarter. But the “smarts” that one presumably gets in
class are not enough for Winnie here, even though the school has some mighty
unusual ways of teaching: Isaac Newton is the science instructor, for example,
and Winnie crosses paths with Nessie of Loch Ness fame. The school episodes in
this dual-narrator book (Miss Drake and Winnie present different chapters and
sections of chapters) are primarily humorous; even some of the less-pleasant
students whom Winnie encounters are not really very threatening. But there is a threat here, as in the previous
book, A Dragon’s Guide to the Care and
Feeding of Humans. It comes in the form of Winnie’s grandfather, Jarvis,
who is determined to take her away from Miss Drake and gain custody of her,
even if that means resorting to kidnapping. This somewhat more serious plot
element – although it is not too
serious, since readers will know that Jarvis cannot possibly succeed in the
long run – is mostly the province of Miss Drake, while the school adventures
are mostly in Winnie’s purview and told in her voice. But the whole point of
these books is that friendship, including interspecies friendship, overrules
all notions of “pets” and “owners” and is an absolute necessity for making
one’s way in the world and, oh yes, fighting off evildoers. So it is only when
Miss Drake and Winnie join forces that their combined cleverness, flexibility,
pluck and, lest we forget, magic, can be brought fully to bear on the nefarious
Jarvis and his plots. There is nothing particularly original in the “friendship
above all” theme or in the notion of an ordinary (but special) protagonist
pairing up with an extraordinary (and magical) character. But the overall
lighthearted tone of both books in this series is pleasant, and the
illustrations by Mary GrandPré
– best known for her work on the U.S. versions of the Harry Potter books, of
which readers will find some echoes here – enliven the chapter openings and the
novel as a whole. The message of the series, presented plainly when Winnie at
last confronts her grandfather, is an absolutely conventional one for books
designed for preteens: “‘Money is
happiness,’ Granddad snapped. …‘No,’ I argued. ‘You can’t be happy without
friendship and love.’” And of course what Winnie finds with Miss Drake, and for
that matter at the Spriggs Academy, are the precious things that money cannot
buy. Even Jarvis, it turns out, has a soft spot – a small one – for certain
non-monetary compensation; and it is eventually Winnie who ties everything up
neatly by being just devious enough, and just enough of a hard bargainer, to
convince Jarvis that “she’s the granddaughter I always wanted and everything I
could wish for in an heir.” The book’s sentimental ending is a trifle on the
treacly side, but readers already enamored of Winnie and Miss Drake will enjoy
what is sure to be only a respite before they return for another round of draconic,
if not iconic, adventures.
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