Wing and Claw Book 1: Forest of Wonders by Linda Sue Park

From the publisher: The first book in a planned trilogy, Linda Sue Park’s enchanting new fantasy-adventure richly explores the links between magic and botany, family and duty, environment and home.

Wing and Claw Book 1: Forest of Wonders, has much to recommend it. The cover is gorgeous, and the main character, Raffa, is admirable and talented. His cousin makes fun of him for his small size, but he is the better apothecary student.

Raffa, his parents, his cousin, and his uncle live in a village and are all apothecaries (or apothecaries in the making). They live near the Forest of Wonders, where they collect plants that can be used to lessen pain and heal injuries. Raffa has a gift, an ability to intuit whether combinations will help or harm. He saves a badly injured bat, and it leads to consequences he couldn’t possibly have imagined.

There is conflict in the story, and peer pressure, and bad behavior by adults. For once, a bat is one of the good characters (although at the expense of crows and owls, who are depicted as doing bad things). For my taste, for a book called Forest of Wonders, too much of the story was set in the city and not enough in the Forest itself. I hope more time will be spent in the Forest in the remaining two books in the series.

The story has the nice message that every life is worth saving. It also questions the relationship between humans and animals and the rights that animals have. The book does not stand alone; it ends very much in the middle of the story. Wing and Claw Book 1: Forest of Wonders is intended for children age 8-12/grades 3-7. I think it will appeal to children who love animals and nature (although parents should be aware that some animals are intentionally injured in the story). A 3.5 star book.

I read an advance reader's edition of Wing and Claw Book 1: Forest of Wonders. It was released on March 1.

The Midnight Queen by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

The Midnight Queen is the first book in Sylvia Izzo Hunter’s Noctis Magicae series. It is set in the past in an alternate version of our own universe. Maps in the front of the book show Merlin College at Oxford and the Kingdoms of Britain, Eire, and Alba.

Told in the third person, the two main characters are Gray, a student at Oxford, and Sophie, the daughter of an Oxford professor. Gray is coerced into participating in a shady outing that results in another student’s death. Although Gray is not at fault, he is blamed and whisked away to the professor’s country home in Breizh (the alternate universe’s version of France). There he meets Sophie.

Oxford is a school of magic, and Gray has many magical talents, including the ability to turn into an owl. Sophie does not appear to have any magic (and women are not scholars, in any event), but things are not as they seem, with Sophie’s magic and other circumstances.

Gray is plain and awkward; Sophie is so inconsequential as to blend into the background whenever the professor is around. Gray and Sophie find themselves caught up in intrigue involving a plot against the King of England as a sweet attraction grows between them.

There is nothing particularly original about the magical world or the romance, but the plot took some unexpected turns and the key characters are well developed. Sophie eventually grows into the standard, all powerful “chosen one” of a sort, but she is likeable. Interesting side characters flesh out the story into more than just a teen romance.

There are some plot holes and I found some of the narrative confusing. (Sophie is clearly the oldest child in the Professor’s household but it took me awhile to figure this out as her sister Amelia is described more than once as her “elder” sister.) But I got thoroughly caught up in this book and will definitely read the sequels. Recommended for anyone who likes a good historical fantasy.

The Midnight Queen can be found at the Galesburg Public Library in the adult fiction area under the author’s last name, Hunter. The second book in the series, The Lady of Magick, is due out in September 2015.