The House on Falling Star Hill - Hardcover

Grade 5-8-Tim Swift arrives in his grandparents' sleepy English village and immediately senses that things are not quite right. The gardens are bare of flowers and a grief-stricken woman roams the town lamenting her missing child. Legend has it that the manor house is haunted. Long ago, shortly after falling stars blasted holes in the property, first flowers, and then people began disappearing. Locals blamed the little men that some claimed they saw. While helping Hunter, the taciturn stranger who owns the house, Tim discovers the truth when he, Hunter, and a mysterious girl with telepathic powers leap into a parallel world and begin a familiar fantasy quest. They must defeat an evil Duke and his powerful Warlock from taking over this medieval realm and restore the High King to power. This novel contains some inventive touches-petrified trees that have floating leaves, exquisite jeweled flowers, enormous riding pigs, giant boys, flying carriages, and toxic "killing" winds. It is also derivative of many other fantasies in which characters are imprisoned underground while mining for some precious material and people's minds are taken over by magic. Some instances strain credibility, such as Tim's amazing ability to shoot a slingshot with deadly accuracy the first time he tries it. This is a fun read but it lacks the fully realized characterizations and the substantive plots of similarly themed works like Garth Nix's "Abhorsen" trilogy (HarperCollins), Tamora Pierce's "Protector of the Small" series (Random), and Diana Wynne Jones's "Dark Lord of Derkholm" series (HarperCollins).-Sharon Rawlins, Piscataway Public Library, NJ
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Gr. 4-8. On holiday with his grandparents, young Tim is baffled by the quiet English village where they live: no one grows flowers, and the beautiful mansion on the hill stands vacant, shrouded in eerie tales of unexplained tragedies. Then a mysterious stranger, Hunter, moves into the hill house, planting flowers with abandon, and Tim begins to glimpse the magical truth behind the folklore: the mansion, and its blooming hill, open the portal to Tallis, a fantastic, alternate world on the brink of war. Hunter and Tim enter Tallis, and accompanied by a wild entourage of Tallisian folk, each with unique skills, embark on an epic plan to rescue the kingdom from a diabolical duke and restore the benevolent Tallisian monarchy. Extensive, logistical details of battle and rescue will slow the story for some, and messages about Tim's self-discovery and growing confidence are a bit heavy-handed. But Molloy's wild, sweeping adventure will easily transport readers to a richly drawn world filled with fantastical creatures, magic, wondrous inventions, and an appealing cast of sympathetic heroes and hideous villains. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved