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  • The Book of Storms by Ruth Hatfield
  • April Spisak
Hatfield, Ruth The Book of Storms. Holt, 2014 [368p] ISBN 978-0-8050-9998-0 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys     R Gr. 5-7

Eleven-year-old Danny is used to his parents chasing storms, but when they don’t return home after a giant one, he shakes himself out of his fear and decides to find them. Aiding him is his brand new magical object, a stick that allows him to communicate with elements of the natural world, though Danny is still very much on his own as a kid with scarce clues and a desperate longing to find his beloved parents. Danny is being sought even as he’s searching, though: Sammael, an evil, haunting otherworldly creature wants the stick for himself. The gripping pace and complex moral musings (even Sammael experiences his own sort of flawed love for an animal companion, and the personification of Death is flawlessly nuanced in her uneasy neutrality) pair with a setting that is so vividly described that it becomes a character in itself. Readers will eagerly anticipate the next volume in this anticipated trilogy, particularly after a breathtaking final chapter that leaves more open than it resolves.

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