The Hidden Deep

April 15, 2013
This second volume in the Threshold series stands, as did the series debut, with one foot in the clouds--amid an epic battle of angels and demons--and another planted firmly on the Earth, entrenched in the ordinary lives of the Pomeroy family. In this relatively slow-paced sequel, 14-year-old Prissie Pomeroy learns that an angel has been kidnapped right from her family's apple orchard. The other angels she knows--some of whom are members of her community in human guise--are trying to locate and rescue him. The angels are also concerned with protecting Prissie; she is important to the mission of the angels in some way and is in serious danger, but the nature of her role is not made clear. Scenes of angels and occasionally demons going about their mysterious, ethereal business are woven into the more commonplace story of a young woman dealing with complicated friendships and family dynamics. While the angels-and-demons subplot is a bit baffling, the more realistic elements of the narrative, such as the scenes that describe Prissie's struggles with jealousy of the time and attention her father devotes to his bakery assistant, are well-executed and resonant. A slow but ultimately successful installment in a serviceable Christian fiction series aimed at middle-grade readers. (order of angels, discussion questions) (Fantasy. 10-14)

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June 1, 2013
Grades 6-8 Clean-cut country girl Prissie is back, juggling school, up-and-down friendships, and the complex world of angels first introduced in Kinde's first Threshold series title (The Blue Door, 2012). Fourteen-year-old Prissie's family orchard is the setting for a shocking celestial crime: an angel is kidnapped from among the apple trees. Having reconciled herself to the fact she can see angels, Prissie has been drawn into a monumental struggle for supremacy between good (angels) and evil (demons) while at the same time trying to navigate the more mundane, yet often equally bewildering, social rules of school and fellow studentsparticularly a boy named Ransom. As Prissie's angelic friends and protectors Koji and Milo slowly reveal more of their world to Prissie, and her own importance to it, the stakes raise for all involved. This is somewhat slow in execution and occasionally murky in its portrayal of the tangling story lines and subplots, but readers of Christian middle-grade fiction are still likely to gravitate to the series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)