Skycircus

by Peter Bunzl

Overview

Old secrets can weigh heavy when you want to fly.

Invited to a spectacular show by Slimwood’s Stupendous Traveling Skycircus, Lily, Robert, and mechanical fox Malkin can’t wait to jump aboard.

But behind the daredevil acts of the bewitching bird-girl and other performers, something sinister lurks. And soon, the watchful ringmistress, Madame Lyon-Mane, reveals a deadly plan for Lily. Could the secrets of Lily’s past hold their only chance at escape from this terrible trap?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631634314
Publisher:	North Star Editions
Publication date:	02/11/2020
Series:	The Cogheart Adventures , #3
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	8 - 13 Years

About the Author

Peter Bunzl grew up in London and lives there with his partner Michael. He is a BAFTA-award-winning animator, as well as a writer and filmmaker.

Editorial Reviews

"Full of dark thrills and derring-do ... a rollicking adventure story." —Foreword Reviews, starred review

From the Publisher

2019-10-23
In which two teens and a mechanical pet fox are kidnapped into a flying circus.

Lily's 14th birthday is a thorough letdown. Papa's received an award from the Mechanists' Guild, so her celebration's been postponed until after the boring award ceremony full of stuffy men who sneer infuriatingly about hybrids—humans who have some mechanical parts. (None of them knows, of course, that Lily herself is a forbidden hybrid, kept alive by the Cogheart.) How convenient that someone unknown has left her a parcel as an invitation to adventure, containing a creepy rhyme, a notebook of her dead mother's, and VIP tickets to Slimwood's Stupendous Skycircus. Accompanied by two human friends, Robert and Tolly, and Malkin the mechanimal fox, Lily attends this unpleasant show, where the attractions are miserable-looking hybrid teens. The kids resolve to rescue the show's star, the winged girl Angelique, but she, Robert, and Malkin are nabbed themselves. In a heavy-handed disability storyline, the circus owners treat the hybrid characters as grotesques on display. Though the hybrids' existence—with mechanical parts as prosthetics, a pacemaker, or a post-human transcendence of brittle bones—raises interesting questions, they're resolved with a bland message of universal humanity. Angelique's blackness in this overwhelmingly white world, on the other hand, barely rates a mention. Still, the pacing is exhilarating despite a surfeit of meaningful speeches.

Series fans will still enjoy this entry, though the earnest overwhelms the playful. (map, glossary) (Steampunk fantasy. 10-13)

Kirkus Reviews