Avalon: Circles in the Stream
The Avalon: Web of Magic series, Book 1
Shelly Roberts
Scholastic
Fiction, MG? Fantasy
Themes: Anthropomorphism, Canids, Girl Power, Hidden Wonders, Magic Workers, Portal Adventures
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Description
Stonehill, Pennsylvania is a typical, quiet American town. Fifteen-year-old Emily hates it. It's not that it's unpleasant: there are parks and
forests, and even an old wildlife preserve at Ravenswood that some say is haunted. It's just that she just moved here eight weeks ago from Colorado,
leaving her life and her father behind to live with Mom at her veterinary clinic and animal boarding facility; however beautiful Stonehill is, it's
the last place she wants to be.
One day, a strange emergency comes in to her mother's clinic, a catlike animal with bizarre clawlike burn marks. The strange thing is the wounds
glow a sickly green - only she's the only one who can see it. As she tries to find out what hurt the beast, she accidentally stumbles on to a secret
hidden deep in Ravenswood: a secret portal of magic that leads her to a strange stone and her own untapped talents. Together with Adriene, a reclusive
girl who lives at the preserve with her mother and the mistwolf Stormbringer, and Kara, the spoiled, snobbish daughter one of the town's richest people,
they must face a danger that has nearly claimed another world and now threatens their own.
Review
Okay, okay, I admit it - the cover looked cool, so I bought it. I really have to stop doing that. The story wasn't bad, really, it just felt predictable and shallow. It could have been more than it was, with better characterization and plotting. The repetitious scenes where characters stand around and argue over one or another's denial of this or that unusual event (and subsequent repeated observations that "wipe doubt" from their minds) could've been trimmed way back. I also found the glimpses in life in the other world trite and shallow. Painting things improbable colors and adding exaggerated features isn't enough to make a thing magical in my mind. The mistwolf was the most successful creature described. The rest felt like they had been transplanted from a story aimed at a much younger audience, one that asks no more of a story than to have giant purple bears or green-striped deer. This contributes to an overall sense of target confusion: a protagonist Emily's age should qualify for Young Adult status, yet the book on the whole reads like an odd mix of Children's and Middle Grade. The magic itself lacked source and logic, simply activating and vanishing as the plot willed it. Needless to say, I have no intentions of following Avalon any further.