Willa is a young night-spirit jaetter of the Dead Hollow clan of the Faeran, an orphan and a sort of New world fairy? She’s also a woodwitch with the ability to talk to trees and plants and some animals, and she can change skin color like a chameleon and blend so that she can hardly be seen among the flora of the forest. Jaetters are thieves who come at night and steal from the day-folk for the benefit of the ruler of Willa’s clan, the paderan. Faeran believe in the guideline that “there is no I, only we”, but Willa is an individual. She escapes from the confines of her dictatorial clan life, but she finds that life without the clan is lonely and purposeless. So, most of the book is about Willa’s search for home, community, and family.

Who’s editing the books these days, anyway? Willa of the Wood tells a good story, set in the Great Smoky Mountains, with atmosphere and suspense and compelling characters and a touch of Americana (Cherokee characters, the mountains, panthers and otters and other animals native to the area). BUT there are some obvious glitches that a good editor should have noticed. The first paragraph of chapter 33 repeats the action in the last few paragraphs of chapter 32, as if the reader is picking up on a serial installment of the story. Why? None of the other chapters have this repetition (that I noticed), and it was disconcerting.

Then, there were niggling little questions I had as I was reading. The miller, Nathaniel, says he earns his living from the mill, taking one bag of cornmeal for every ten that he grinds, but no one ever comes to the mill to have their grain milled. And most of the time Nathaniel is absent from home, anyway. How can he run a business when he’s gone half the time and has no customers? And how many children were there in the underground prison? It seemed as if there were lots, more than Willa could visit or free, on multiple levels. Then, the story said that she freed only 23 or 24 children. What happened to the rest of the children? And why did the Faeran let the girl stay with her baby brother?

There were more questions I had as I read. Some were resolved; others were not. I can see how this fantasy fiction would appeal especially to children who live in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee or South Carolina. Or those who like stories about communication with animals. The entire book is rather dark and melancholy, with themes of cultural annihilation, cruelty, power-grabbing, and greed. But, as I said, it may appeal to some readers. I thought it was OK, but I was kind of glad for the happy-ish ending. If it’s the first in a series, there wasn’t enough there to draw me back for a second go-round.

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This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

We all have such different senses of humor. What to me is just silly may be laugh out loud funny to you. What is witty and fun for me may be boring to another person. So, when I say that humor in Wizardmatch just didn’t tickle my funny bone, that’s not to say that it won’t poke yours or that it shouldn’t. A chocolate pudding swimming pool, a boy whose magical talent is burping out birds, a wizard grandfather who is a spoiled brat—these just weren’t very humorous to me. But you—or your kids– may find them to be hilarious.

“Mortimer de Pomporromp—the oldest, most powerful, most celebrated wizard in his entire family—had the sniffles.”

Now, that’s a promising first line. I liked the name, Mortimer de Pomporromp. I liked that Mortimer’s granddaughter Lennie, the actual protagonist of the book, was half-Filipina. I liked Mortimer’s sensible assistant, Estella. I liked the persnickety cat, Fluffles aka Sir Fluffington the Fourth. I liked the eventual emphasis on forgiveness and family unity and teamwork.

I didn’t care for the constant sparring and fighting that went on between all of the characters in the book. I just didn’t like any of them very much. I didn’t like the snot/barf/gross motif that wove its way throughout the story either, although I realize that repetitive emphasis on bodily functions wasn’t written in for my benefit. Authors think middle graders in particular love that kind of stuff, and they write down to them, IMHO.

Then, there were some things in the book that just didn’t make sense. Lennie thinks her grandfather may be favoring her brother Michael over her partly because she’s a girl but also because she’s part Filipina. However, Poppop Pomporromp does favor Michael, who’s also half Filipino. When the villain of the story is trapped in a supposedly inescapable sticky trap, it turns out that it is escapable after all. And all of the adults in the story are horrendously bad at being mature adults; they’re more childishly competitive and bickering than the children. (Maybe that’s not so unrealistic as I wish it were.)

Final word: I didn’t care for it. You may like it better than I did. It depends on your sense of humor.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.