Josephine is sure she’ll be bored when her parents move her to the tiny town of Awkward Falls, Manitoba, but that’s before she discovers her next-door neighbors: kid genius Thaddeus Hibble, his robot butler, and a zombie cat. But the deranged killer Fetid Stenchley, who killed Thaddeus’s grandfather, has escaped the insane asylum and is on his way to take out Thaddeus as well. Throw in an aging movie star, half a dozen enormous genetic monsters, and some dark secrets about the past, and Awkward Falls is turning out to be not so boring after all.

This is a first novel (though Graves has written “many picture books,” according to the author bio), and it shows. The prose is mediocre; it’s not really bad, but it’s not terribly engaging, either. It’s just…there. The plot structure is kind of a mess – there’s almost no rising action, just chapters and chapters of climax, an awkwardly-placed moment of downtime, and then brief excitement that ends abruptly without actually resolving anything.

Most egregiously, though, Josephine, the ostensible heroine, is a complete cipher of a character. The bland Everykid protagonist can be a problem in kids’ lit, but I usually see it with boys. Josephine’s a shining example of it. We’re told in quick succession that she’s quirky, but also wants to be normal, but also doesn’t want to be normal. She doesn’t appear to have any interests or hobbies, and before she makes her only significant action of the book – going over to the Hibble house and meeting Thaddeus – we’re given a long explanation of how impulsive she is, instead of, you know, being shown her doing impulsive things. Eventually she disappears into the background of the narrative in favor of the more colorful Thaddeus and Stenchley and Felix, the zombie cat. (Really, Felix is the closest thing this book has to a hero.)

But my major problem with the book was that it was…well, gruesome. Aggressively and unrelentingly so. Stenchley is a cannibal, so he spends the book doing his best to literally eat people alive – he bites Josephine so hard he draws blood. His past crimes – including strangling Thaddeus’s grandfather – are described in loving detail. So is the absolutely horrendous “treatment” he receives in the insane asylum, which involves opening up his skull (it’s kept shut with Velcro) and applying extreme heat to his brain. Thaddeus, meanwhile, has a genius for reanimating dead animals, and his work is also described in elaborate, squishy detail. His grandfather, who has been dead ten years, is reanimated halfway through the book, and the rotting zombie stumbles around, decaying in, I probably don’t have to say, extremely gory detail until he is devoured by the mutated monsters he invented.

Look, I’m not clutching my pearls and crying “Think of the children!” This book is intended for sixth graders, who can probably handle it. I just think it’s gross. Gratuitously, excessively gross, with no strength of plot or characterization to balance it out.

Overall, The Orphan of Awkward Falls is simultaneously kind of bland and extraordinarily icky, and so it gets one and a half cupcakes.

Princess Emeralda is clumsy and awkward. She doesn’t fit her mother’s idea of a princess (and she hates her mother’s idea of a proper prince for her to marry), and she’s also no good at the magic her aunt Grasssina, a powerful witch, has been trying to teach her. When it gets to be too much, Emeralda takes off and does something impulsive—she kisses the talking frog who says he’s really a prince. And he isn’t lying…but instead of freeing him from his enchantment, she’s turned into a frog, too. Now Emeralda and Eadric have to try and track down the witch who cast the spell in the first place if they ever want to be human again.

I picked up this book because I like the modern spin on princess stories that’s been developing since, at very rough approximation, the 80s, when Disney started slanting most of its princess movies to make the princess an active character. The princess who isn’t dainty and feminine but does get to be a hero is now an archetype, but she’s one I can get behind. So when I read the summary of this book, I was excited to run across another variant on a fun theme.

Oh, boy, was I disappointed.

I knew I would be irritated with the book fairly quickly. Within the first couple chapters, Emeralda and Eadric have their meet-cute, in which he explains a witch enchanted him for insulting her fashion sense and Emeralda informs him that she won’t kiss him because he wanted any old Princess and of course she wants to feel special. Gosh, gender tropes are hilarious! Especially when they aren’t even tongue-in-cheek. Oy.

So eventually Emme gives him the kiss, turns into a frog, and they go off on wacky adventures trying to find the witch who can disenchant them. As close as I can tell, the story of the book ought to revolve around Emme gaining confidence in herself and her ability to do magic, while Eadric learns not to be so obnoxious; as they adventure, they fall in love. And the story kind of does that…but it forgot about Eadric, who is exceedingly annoying. So all the bickering between them, which is clearly supposed to be flirty and full of romantic tension, does nothing to endear him to the reader, and he never matures or develops. And it doesn’t help that the dialogue all reads very unnaturally, with long monologues and frequent subject changes:

”Do you want some?” Eadric said through a mouthful of worm.
I spun around in surprise. “What are you doing? I thought you were sick to your stomach. You shouldn’t eat any of that—it might be poisoned! Spit it out! Spit it out right now!”
“Are you kidding? This is delicious. It’s not poisoned. Here, try some.”
“Great,” I said. “I’m stuck in a cage with an idiot who eats food given to him by a witch and will probably be dead by morning.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who’s going to bed hungry. You are such a worrier! I’ve eaten half of this worm already and I still feel fine. If you’re sure you don’t want any, I’m going to finish the worm and get some sleep. We’ll think of a way to get out of this in the morning. Now, leave me alone and let me enjoy my worm in peace. Unlike someone else around here, I know how to appreciate the finer things in life.”

It’s just…so stilted. Every character talks like that throughout the whole book. It made me crazy.

I think the goal of the author was to hit a tone something like that of the masterful Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede, which take fairy tale tropes and spin them together into a wacky, charming world, with a kick-ass princess at the center of it all. Unfortunately, nothing about this book seemed particularly creative and it missed that tone completely. It was a by-the-numbers fairy tale, with clichés thrown together in a mediocre mix. The characters did nothing for me and it was so forgettable I forgot to write this review for three months. Whoops. I have no interest in picking up any of its sequels, so it gets one and a half cupcakes.

James is not your average boy. With his lanky build, long black curls like candles, and sinister, aloof demeanor, he would be set apart from his peers at Eton even without the shame of being born a bastard hanging over his head – not to mention the fact that he bleeds yellow. He is also clever and fearless, however, and soon wins the admiration of his house (the Oppidans), the friendship of the loyal “Jolly” Roger Davies, and the love (he hopes) of the beautiful Ottoman Sultana Ananova. But ill fate dogs James, and before long he is exiled to sea, the first step in a chain of events that will turn him into the dreaded Captain Hook.

Telling the story of a sympathetic, once-noble hero who, through circumstance and his own fatal flaw, becomes a villain is not an easy task. John Milton did a good job of it with Satan in Paradise Lost; George Lucas pretty much botched it with Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars Episodes I-III. Unfortunately, Hart is way over on the Lucas end of the spectrum. Hook is one of the most spectacular villains of all time, and Capt. Hook’s James has little of his menace or his charm – which is odd enough, considering that Hart also wrote the screenplay for Hook, which is a deeply wonderful movie. (“Rufi-oh! Rufi-oh! Ru! Fi! OH!”) Then again, Hook was much more about Peter and his relationship with his kids, most likely thanks to Spielberg, who loves him some daddy issues. Capt. Hook is pure villain, and it is by far the inferior vehicle.

The main problem is with the boy I’ll call James, as he does not get the appellation “Hook” until the final pages. James is not a sympathetic character. He doesn’t start out as basically a nice boy who gets led down the path of darkness by fate’s cruel hand – he’s already well down that path by the time we meet him. Even for the angsty teen set, he’s almost impossible to relate to. As mentioned above, his blood is yellow; he keeps a flock of trained spiders to poison his enemies and weave him an impervious waistcoat; he deals with people who irritate him with the knowledge of how they’re going to die, although how he comes by this knowledge and whether it is at all accurate is never given to the reader. He never grows (or, as one might expect for a character becoming a villain, devolves); he starts the book weird and creepy and ends the book weird and creepy. He also tends to harp on “good form,” as Barrie’s Hook did, but fails to define it in any clear sense; at one point he declares that one may do anything to win, no matter how underhanded, as long as one maintains “good form,” which seems pretty much like a contradiction in terms.

In general, in fact, James is contradictory and vague. Although he occasionally rails rather randomly against the social injustices in the world (more on that later), he practically worships Charles II, who was not exactly liberal in his politics (the man is synonymous with the restoration of the British Monarchy and the dissolution of Parliament, for Pete’s sake!). He also waxes rhapsodic about Louis XVI’s use of the guillotine, which is bizarre, considering that the guillotine was the weapon of choice of the revolutionaries, not the royals, and Louis of course actually met his death via La Guillotine. If you’re going to make your hero a history buff, get the history right.

James’s relationships with the other characters in the book are also problematic. His only real friend is a pudgy, chipper boy named Roger Peter Davies, who James immediately nicknames “Jolly Roger.” Their friendship, which is extremely close and just about the only sympathetic thing about James, is not developed at all – they meet and are promptly ready to die for one another. That’s sweet, but not exactly compelling. Not to mention the fact that Roger’s name threw me out of the book every time it was mentioned. For those of you who aren’t Pan buffs like yours truly (or haven’t seen Finding Neverland), Peter Davies was one of the five Davies boys J. M. Barrie befriended and to whom the story of Peter and Wendy was originally told – and, of course, Peter’s namesake. The Jolly Roger is, of course, Hook’s ship. The combination of names is jarring, especially since you wouldn’t normally associate the real-life Peter with Hook’s best friend. (James’s nickname, James Matthew Bastard, gives him the same initials as J. M. Barrie and creates a similar off-putting effect.) Plus, James’s plan to steal Roger’s father’s yacht and rename it the Jolly Roger, on which they will sail the high seas, is just strange. My co-Active Voicer Rebecca and I are pretty close, but I don’t plan to steal a boat and name it after her. (Not to mention the fact that a gentleman’s pleasure boat might navigate the Thames all right, but I don’t see it doing too well on the open sea.)

James’s relationship with Ananova is equally hollow. They fall in love at first sight, which as Romeo and Juliet taught us, always works out extremely well for teenagers. When James sneaks out to steal a kiss from Ananova, who has little in the way of personality aside from haughtiness and beauty, it sparks off an international incident, thanks to his bastard status, and she is quickly shipped off back home. James and Roger decide to take over the boat that is taking her away from England and kidnap her, although James doesn’t bother to wonder if Ananova wants to be kidnapped. Although they manage to escape on Ananova’s horse, Pandora (one of many references to women as evil temptresses, and also highly impractical – horses have a hard enough time swimming without three teenagers on their backs), we are told – not shown – that they are quickly caught by the authorities. Then Ananova disappears from the book, with instructions for James on how to get to her island to rescue her, since she is apparently incapable of rescuing herself. Apparently one gets to Greece via the second star to the right (of the constellation Lyra) and straight on ‘til morning. And here I thought those were the directions to somewhere else.

Ananova isn’t exactly a negative representation of a woman, she’s just sort of a useless one. Although she carries herself like someone capable of accomplishing things, the narration belies that; everything that happens to Ananova is because of James, and once he fails to rescue her before she leaves England, she is shipped helplessly off to be married. James decides to get himself seaworthy before he goes after her, which means that poor Ananova is condemned to at least a few years of loveless marriage before James deigns to pick her up – if he does, because I don’t recall Captain Hook having a girlfriend.

The other significant player in Capt. Hook is Arthur Darling, James’s rival at school, who, I assume, is meant to grow up to sire Wendy, Michael, and John. Darling is everything James isn’t – he’s the classic Eton Blue, strapping and handsome and preppy. His hatred for James is immediate, vicious, and reciprocated equally, to the point where the boys are ready to swordfight to the death. This seems a little over-the-top for schoolboys, but I can stomach it. What I can’t stomach is Darling’s characterization. Barrie’s Darling is pretty thoroughly bourgeois, so I’m not sure how he’s managed to get himself into Eton; furthermore he’s a silly, weak man, but not a vicious or an evil one, so his bloodthirsty vendetta against James is a bit hard to swallow. Furthermore, Darling and Hook are traditionally played by the same actor, suggesting a deep commonality between the characters. Although it is not actually contrary to Peter Pan to give Hook and Darling completely opposite natures, it flies in the face of Peter Pan tradition, and the choice to do so is never really justified, since Darling is not much of an antagonist.

I could have dealt with all of these objections, but Capt. Hook’s treatment of race really was the final nail in this book’s coffin. After the botched attempt to kidnap/rescue Ananova, James’s father sends him off to sea, where Jolly joins him. After a few chapters of heavy-handed foreshadowing, it turns out that their ship is a slave ship, although the slave trade is illegal at this point in history. James protests and is thrown in the brig with the slaves, where he quickly befriends an enormous young warrior named Azibo. Of course, James leads the slaves to freedom over…well, over one pirate, as the rest have hearts of gold. The Africans are all very much in the “noble savage” line – Azibo has a magic fruit that gives James the ability to see in the dark, and a little girl has a doll with lion mane hair and diamond eyes – and as noble savages, they are incapable of rallying themselves together, instead relying on a mopey white teenager to save them: “Jolly R marveled at James’ uncanny ability to raise the spirits of these poor souls, inciting them against the authority that had enslaved them.” The patronizing and marginalizing attitude towards the Africans is exacerbated by the fact that I’m pretty sure that Azibo is meant to become the pirate described in Peter Pan by this sentence: “That gigantic black behind him has had many names since he dropped the one with which dusky mothers still terrify their children on the banks of the Guadjo-mo.” Lovely.

Finally, the prose was…a little much. Here’s an early passage, with James listening to Jolly Roger being beaten by the Collegers:

At the same instant, the moth dancing about James’ flame dipped too close, and one wing caught fire. James struck with blurring precision, snatching the moth in his hands. He plucked the burning wing from its body, pinching the flame out with his fingers. He watched the single-winged moth struggling in his hand, flopping about with no escape possible. Another strike echoed from below. Another scream. James thrust the moth into the flame, putting the creature out of its misery. He held the flaming insect between his fingers, watching it char. He showed no pain as the flame brushed his fingers. Placing the blackened remained in his journal, he folded the pages shut, capturing the impression of the burned wing forever.

Beside the charred impression he wrote: “Courage is the decision to fly straight into the flame while knowing the consequences.”

I think James listens to a little too much Evanescence.

Capt. Hook gets one and a half cupcakes, and all of those cupcakes go to Jolly Roger, who, stupid name aside, was quite lovable. James, however, has nothing on the man he supposedly grows up to be.