Juggler in the Wind
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
A young adult adventure with a completely new take on the Greek Olympian gods.
When a ragtag circus shows up in the town of Buchanan, Kansas, fourteen-year-old Randy Carmichael faces a deep mystery. Voices summon him, a godlike figure appears in his dreams, and supernatural adversaries lie in wait for him as he embarks on a dangerous quest that will take him beyond mortal reality. The first book in The Wand Bearer Trilogy; USA Book News “Best Books” Award; featured in READ magazine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mystery, magic, and mythology collide in this rambling novel, which launches the Wand Bearer trilogy. Narrator Randy, 14, follows voices calling him to the Circus Olympus, which sets up near his Kansas hometown, despite his alcoholic mother's insistence he stay away. Determined to learn the secret of the circus and his mother's aversion to it, Randy joins the troupe a ragtag bunch of performers who he later learns are thousands of years old when they leave town, and acquires a sudden talent for juggling. A cloaked stranger with horns and a carved wooden wand appears to Randy on several occasions, apparently in his dreams; eventually Randy passes a life-changing test in a sequence in which the stranger assumes the guises of three threatening beasts. Randy discovers long-buried secrets about his past and his relationship to the stranger, but other answers are left for later books. The combination of a circus environment with elements of ever-popular Greek mythology has potential, but heavy-handed imagery, undue repetition, and extraneous minutiae weigh down the story. Ages 12 18.