Jo was dropped on the doorstep of Lily Larouche when she was just a baby with a note asking that she be taken care of, but warning that she is a "DANGEROUS" baby. Since then, Jo has lived in the desert of California with Aunt Lily, and now she's thirteen years old and trying to deal with her aunt's eccentricities, most often displayed at her parties and manifested as throwing rats at actresses, jumping into the pool wearing her cocktail dress, smashing records against her guests, and more. The paper loves her, of course, but it can be quite troublesome to be loved by the paper, or to be related to someone loved by the paper. At one particularly unusual Christmas costume party, a Russian colonel named Anatoly Korsakov dressed as a daffodil (his costume consists of a sad little fake flower on a hat) turns up, not quite sure what's going on, just that he must protect Jo. The evening grows more and more wild as Lily once again gets out of hand and a mysterious package containing a black box falls from the sky onto the head of an insolent, gun-toting boy dressed as a hedgehog. The Colonel's best friend, a glamorous, three-foot-tall talking cockroach named Sefino (who for some reason I image with Dan Stevens' voice; don't ask me why) arrives in a flurry of indignation at a questionable newspaper called the Eldritch Snitch, which has been printing nasty stories about him, and a slightly lame self-proclaimed Chinese villain named Ken Kiang burns the house down and tries to kill Jo, Lily, Korsakov, and Sefino. Eventually, the four find themselves in Eldritch City, a strange place of ruins, multiple cultures, and orders of knights. One such order is the Order of Odd-Fish, a group of people who research useless information (the more pointless, the better). Jo, Lily, the Colonel, and Sefino begin to figure out their connection to Eldritch City, but for Jo, there's a lot more than most people suspect. Eldritch City has entered a period of unease--at least for those who watch Teenage Ichthala and believe in its power to predict the future. Jo has many questions. Who is the Ichthala? Why are some people so worried? And what does a certain unpleasant TV trickster have to do with anything?
Two used copies were stuffed between some nasty pop realistic fiction and the title, old-fashioned font, and plain burgundy binding intrigued me. I am so glad that I found this weird little book. It's the only novel by James Kennedy, and he should write more, perhaps returning to the awe-inspiring world he created in The Order of Odd-Fish.
Jo was dropped on the doorstep of Lily Larouche when she was just a baby with a note asking that she be taken care of, but warning that she is a "DANGEROUS" baby. Since then, Jo has lived in the desert of California with Aunt Lily, and now she's thirteen years old and trying to deal with her aunt's eccentricities, most often displayed at her parties and manifested as throwing rats at actresses, jumping into the pool wearing her cocktail dress, smashing records against her guests, and more. The paper loves her, of course, but it can be quite troublesome to be loved by the paper, or to be related to someone loved by the paper. At one particularly unusual Christmas costume party, a Russian colonel named Anatoly Korsakov dressed as a daffodil (his costume consists of a sad little fake flower on a hat) turns up, not quite sure what's going on, just that he must protect Jo. The evening grows more and more wild as Lily once again gets out of hand and a mysterious package containing a black box falls from the sky onto the head of an insolent, gun-toting boy dressed as a hedgehog. The Colonel's best friend, a glamorous, three-foot-tall talking cockroach named Sefino (who for some reason I image with Dan Stevens' voice; don't ask me why) arrives in a flurry of indignation at a questionable newspaper called the Eldritch Snitch, which has been printing nasty stories about him, and a slightly lame self-proclaimed Chinese villain named Ken Kiang burns the house down and tries to kill Jo, Lily, Korsakov, and Sefino. Eventually, the four find themselves in Eldritch City, a strange place of ruins, multiple cultures, and orders of knights. One such order is the Order of Odd-Fish, a group of people who research useless information (the more pointless, the better). Jo, Lily, the Colonel, and Sefino begin to figure out their connection to Eldritch City, but for Jo, there's a lot more than most people suspect. Eldritch City has entered a period of unease--at least for those who watch Teenage Ichthala and believe in its power to predict the future. Jo has many questions. Who is the Ichthala? Why are some people so worried? And what does a certain unpleasant TV trickster have to do with anything?
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August 2017
AuthorI am Fiona, a 16-year-old person. I write reviews of books that I read. I love reading, writing, spoonerisms, word jokes, accents, In Which chapters, parentheses, long dashes, et ceteras, and acronyms. Categories
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