Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that compared to most fantasies this is pretty mild -- no big battles, little real violence.
Families who read this book could discuss the odd world created here, with made-up words, creatures based on myth, and an unusual form of magic. How does magic work in this world? What is the nature of the Great Houses and their denizens? What does Flora understand at the end of the book that she didn't at the beginning?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
Rule 3a of fantasy writing: It helps to have a plot, one plot, that carries the story through from beginning to end. Rookie novelist Wilce based this book on various short stories she wrote for SF magazines, and it shows -- it reads like a mishmash of different story ideas, and frequently loses narrative propulsion as the author explores some byway that interests her.
That said, FLORA SEGUNDA is not without charm. Both major and secondary characters are winning, and Wilce's quirky imagination gives the fantasy world she creates the flavor of something new. Her way of combining formal fantasy-speak with made-up words and phrases based in different languages, and anachronistic expressions from out own world, shouldn't work, but somehow does -- it gives the whole a lightly humorous feeling that makes even duller passages seem sprightly.
Readers who love fantasy, but could do without the "battle between good and evil" storylines and the violence they entail, may find this odd duck of a novel curiously satisfying.
From The Book
Now, the Butler may be banished, but that doesn't mean that the House is entirely dead. Occasionally it groans and thrashes a bit, like a sleeping person whose body moves though her mind drifts far away. But it never moves like you would want it to, like before, when the potty would be next to your bedroom in the middle of the night, but tucked Elsewhere otherwise. Sometimes the long way is the short way and the short way is the long way, and occasionally there is no way at all.
This does not happen too often, because Mamma is strict that it should not. Before, the Butler kept Crackpot in order, but now it's Mamma's Will alone that keeps the House in line. She likes to be in control of things and usually is. But when Mamma is gone, her grip slips a bit, and then so does the way downstairs, or to the back door, or maybe even to the potty. The House moves not in a good and useful way, but in a horribly inconveniently annoying way. Sometimes you have to be careful.
Plot Summary:
Flora lives in a decaying house with 11,000 rooms. Her mother, a general, is rarely home. Her father, mostly insane, potters around in his room and occasionally emerges to destroy things. Her 14th birthday is approaching, and she is supposed to make a dress and write a speech for it, and then enter the army barracks for training, which she doesn't want to do.
One day, in a hurry, she foolishly takes an unreliable elevator in her house, and finds herself in a hidden library where she meets Valefor, her home's magical butler who has been banished by her mother. Resenting her mother, and the endless chores she has to do because of Valefor's banishment, she agrees to help him gain strength and return. But she doesn't know what she's getting herself into.
Related Books:
More Humorous Fantasy:
The Boggart by Susan Cooper
Aunt Maria by Diana Wynne Jones
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
The Amulet of Samarkand: The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book 1 by Jonathan Stroud
Magyk by Angie Sage
The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book 1 by Rick Riordan
Related Web Sites:
Author Interview
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Sexual ContentSome kissing. |
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ViolenceSome mild fantasy violence. Flora thinks she sees a man killed (she's wrong), and worries about being eaten by a monster. |
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Social BehaviorThe main character skips school, lies, forges, and steals, all for what she thinks is a good cause, of course. |
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Commercialism |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoDrinking and drunkenness, cigarettes. |
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