Name: Bluecrowne
ISBN: 9781938022876

Kate Milford

Bluecrowne

In 1810, Lucy Bluecrowne, twelve, is bored living ashore with her stepmother and half brother until two nefarious strangers identify her little brother as the pyrotechnical prodigy they need for their evil plan.

A Greenglass House Story

Sarah Sammis

Milford says in the afterword that Bluecrowne serves to explain why the original family chose not to live in their beautiful house. In this regard, I am reminded of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (and the recent ten episode adaptation for Netflix). Lansdegown is like Hill House, except that it is happy. Both are impossible to navigate places. Both are haunted. Both are ever vigilant. Both are self aware. I will write more on these two houses at a later date, once I have finished re-reading Jackson's novel.


33CCFF - family uhoria cornfield


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Kim Tyo-Dickerson

This is the tale of the Bluecrowne family who built, but never properly lived in, Greenglass House, the hotel at the heart of Milford's first two Greenglass House mysteries. Here is the fascinating, steampunk-infused history of the Sovereign City of Nagspeake, with the original smugglers, mythical items, and magical adventures that are interwoven throughout all the stories.

It is 1810 and young Lucy Bluecrowne, twelve years old, has loved growing up on her father's war ship the Left-Handed Fate. But the dangers of life at sea are growing with a new war in America on the horizon and continued aggression from Napoleon. Lucy's father Capt. Bluecrowne decides to build a house for his new blended family, including Lucy's Chinese half-brother Liao and beloved stepmother Xiaoming, and Lucy is bereft at the prospect of life on land. The house is built full of all the memories and details of places they have stayed at on their travels and studded with opulent stained glass windows. But it's no use, Lucy wants to go to war again with her privateer father. To help her with her grief at leaving the Left-handed FateLucy's father gives her permission to buy a small boat to keep her connected to the water, and so she immediately sets out to find a suitable craft, while her little brother Liao excitedly creates a workshop on the property for his passion, fireworks and bombs and anything explosive.

Setting off through the streets and harbors of Nagspeake to look for boat for sale, the children have no idea that there are darker forces at work in their new home town. Foulk Trigemine is a time "roamer" who is plotting and calculating with his Kairos mechanism to bring a new "conflagrationeer" or pyrotechnic prodigy, to an exacting, dangerous client. He is aided in this effort by a peddler called Blister who also has a knack for fire and deception. Suddenly, the dangers on land far outweigh anything threatening on sea when Liao is whisked away by Trigemine. Lucy realizes that her all-consuming focus on her own problems has let her guard down and now Liao is in danger. Confessing to Xiaoming that she has lost Liao uncovers unknown, powerful secrets about her stepmother, who calls on Lucy to bring all her courage and fortitude to bear not on returning to the Left-Handed Fate, but to rescuing her little brother through sacrifice and fire. 

Exciting Chinese legends, deeply woven into this story, echo later in modern day Nagspeake where the character Milo, adopted from China, finds surprising connections to his birth culture hidden throughout the history of his family's inn. Altogether wonderful world-building here, a fantastical, thrilling mostly stand-alone treasure of a story for grades 5 and up, although reading the first two Greenglass House mysteries first (and I always read in publication order for this very reason) would reward the reader with many welcome insights into the world of Nagspeake.

Laura

Lucy Bluecrowne wants a life of adventure on the high seas. But when her brother is kidnapped by two time-travelers in search of a magic only he possesses, she gets more adventure than she bargained for in her fight to save him.

Bluecrowne

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