To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Riazi’s lush descriptions reject exoticization, Farah's cultural familiarity positioning readers within her perspective: a “sweet sunset pink mosque, beautifully domed and proudly placed,” reminds her of buildings she’s seen in Bangladesh and India, “sharing a linked history of wide arches and rounded roofs.” Riazi combines such tropes as a magic map with the winningly original lizard Resistance corps, offering just the right mix of familiarity and newness.Ī solid middle-grade fantasy and an auspicious debut. The superb worldbuilding offers an ever shifting topography, rather like an Escher vision of the East. Secondary characterization is not so strong Essie and Alex seem more types than people. In her debut, Riazi gives readers a Muslim protagonist who resists genre clichés: she’s resolute rather than feisty, smart but aware of her weaknesses. Farah’s desperation to find Ahmad heightens these deadly stakes. Once in the game, they are given three challenges-and failure to win all three will trap them there.
But when her trying-but-adorable little brother-he has ADHD-vanishes into a mysterious board game called The Gauntlet of Blood and Sand, white Essie and brown-skinned Alex don't hesitate to join Farah in jumping in to rescue him.
Upper East Side Bangladeshi-American Farah’s having a hard time clicking with her old friends from Queens when they come to her 12th birthday party. A young hijabi finds herself, her brother, and her friends trapped in a very dangerous game.
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