Customer Reviews

Falcon and the Charles Street Witch

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Falcon was a great character when she first appeared in 1995, in the magical "Falcon's Egg." At long last, she is back, with more magic than ever. This time Falcon is surrounded by a new collection of wacky, fascinating characters, most notably Blinda the Charles Street Witch and Dirus Horribilus the old dragon (with a digestive problem whose consequences make for one of the book's most hilarious scenes). This is a book a kid can get happily lost in, while soaking up Luli Gray's witty, sophisticated and lyrical storytelling.

In this second Falcon book, she has even more friends, and more dragons. If you like dragons and friendly witches and hilarious saints, you'll love this book. It's a great, great story!

The first Falcon book, "Falcon's Egg", was a great insight into what a child of separated parents goes through. Falcon has to take care of her brother Toody as her mother is unable to deal with raising her kids and so she bears much responsibility on her young shoulders. Finding Egg, and the adventures that follow, give her a powerful secret and something she could choose to care for. What she learns is that loving something sometimes means letting it go, and that there are people in your life who will share some of the weight of world with you if you let them.

In this book, the sequel, Falcon watches as Toody is swept out of a plane and she follows him as she tries to save him. From that moment on, these two enter a world that is both real and fantasy. There is more magic in this book than in the first, and it is sillier. But it is a very enjoyable silliness that contrasts with the seriousness of "Falcon's Egg". I particularly liked Dirius, the old dragon with a little gas problem (hilarious) and Belinda Chomondley, the Charles Street Witch.

"Falcon and the Charles Street Witch" strains to be an especially interesting fantasy story, but fails to be so. I haven't read the first book, but didn't have much trouble understanding this one; its simplicity works hard against it.

A year has passed since the events of "Falcon's Egg," when Falcon let her dragon go free. Now her parents are in denial over Falcon's existance, and the two kids, Falcon and her brother, are visiting their father in Australia when Toody needs to use the bathroom. He ends up falling out of the plane, and Falcon is falling right behind him.

Somehow Falcon ends up alive and well on the ground. She befriends a nice little old lady named Cholmondely, who reveals that Falcon's dragon Egg was the one to save both Falcon and Toody by blowing them on her dragonsbreath. Toody is with Egg, safe and sound, but very, very far away. To find him, Falcon has to band together with an old dragon called Dirus Horribilus, Saint George, and Mrs. Cholmondely, the Charles Street Witch.

Given that the book starts off with the heroine falling out of a plane and landing safely on the ground due to a dragon's breath, I really could not expect too much from the plotline. I appreciate the necessity of fantasy elements, but this is a little much. It reads a bit like the adventure daydreams of a small child. The dragons don't help; Dirus speaks of doggerel, while Egg now speaks in misquoted Shakespeare, a plot twist that made me cringe. The descriptions of Egg, physically, made me cringe even more.

The characterizations are quite flat. Falcon is a generic heroine, without any outstanding characteristics or sympathetic emotions to make her accessible to the readers. Mrs. Cholmondely seems to exist solely for the convenience of the heroine; the author seems to want to make her quirky, but she only comes across as pretentious. Egg is an unexceptional dragon, more inclined to annoy than to intrigue. And Toody is a pretty ordinary little brother character; he's been written a thousand times before.

If readers are searching for a good early-readers fantasy, they should try Emily Rodda's "Rowan of Rin" series or T.A. Barron's "Tree Girl." This one fails to captivate.

For those of us who have been waiting for the sequel to the enchanting, brave and serious Falcon's Egg, this book is water upon parched soil! Moving from the grounded and richly rendered Manhattan of the first book, the author takes us to a surreal (and parallel) universe of Australial aborigines, Scottish bagpipers, classics-misquoting dragons and, most strange of all: happy, friendly New Yorkers!
Falcon's Egg was a love letter to New York and a tribute to great children's book authors of the past, like E. Nesbitt. In Falcon and the Charles Street Witch, the author follows the lead of Lewis Carroll and whips up a story that is absurd, energetic, and often hilarious. I just hope these books keep coming, as Falcon is a character I want to know for a long time!