On a dark night when he was 12 years old, Jacob Reckless laid his hand on the gilded mirror in his missing father’s study as was instantly, magically transported into a strange world where fairy tales have come to life. And from that first visit, Jacob becomes addicted to the escape, the freedom, and the forgetting that the Mirrorworld provides him. Until the day, 12 years later, when his younger brother Will follows him through the mirror and is attacked by the stone-warriors and infected with their poison. Now it becomes a race against time as Jacob and Will must search throughout Mirrorworld to find a cure before Will’s humanity is lost forever.
In her best novel yet, Cornelia Funke has created a richly textured, alluring world that is woven through with magic, beauty, pain and fear. The backstory about Jacob’s adventures in the years he explored the Mirrorworld are only hinted at, but the planned series may provide an opportunity for Funke to flush out Jacob’s story and also develop more of the characters that inhabit Mirrorworld. The cinematic quality of her descriptions, the relentless pace, and the darker, scarier twists on the Brothers Grimm stories combine brilliantly to ensure that Reckless will appeal not only to middle grade readers, also to older teens and adults who love fantasy and fairy tales. I’m completely under the spell and I don’t want a prince to come along and wake me!
- Posted by Cori