The Door in the Moon

Starred review from January 15, 2015
Past, present and future collide; science fiction melds with fantasy and historical thriller in the third volume of this genre-blending quartet.It's Midsummer Eve, and as Wintercombe Abbey is under siege by the Shee and their heartless faery queen, Jake and Sarah are snatched by a gang of time-traveling thieves and thrust into the chaos of the Reign of Terror. Meanwhile Janus, the tyrant of a dystopian future, is reaching back through the magical, inscrutable obsidian mirror to secure his power. After the cluttered excess of the previous volume, The Slanted Worlds (2014), Fisher regains her sure hand on the narrative, juggling a dozen major players through three distinct yet entangled storylines, winding through a single night to converge in an exuberant payoff. The lush prose highlights precise, sensory details to portray worlds from the overripe fecundity of the Summerland to the fetid prisons of revolutionary Paris to the stark beauty of an illusory moonscape. None of the characters are "nice," exactly; but with their wry humor and plucky audacity, their complex motivations and conflicting agendas, every one engages readers' sympathies. They endure loyalty and loss, bravery and betrayal, triumph and terror; but the hard-won victory of the final pages is clearly only a brief respite before they must put aside differences and distrust to unite against their formidable enemies. Engrossing and addictive. (Science fiction/fantasy. 12 & up)

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April 1, 2015

Gr 7 Up-While Sarah (from a dystopian future) and Jake (from the present) get pulled into the French Revolution via the Obsidian Mirror, Oberon Venn (Jake's godfather) is tempted to lose his soul in the faerie world forever. Time travel, faeries, and executions via guillotine seamlessly combine in this entry of Fischer's genre-bending thriller. With vivid world-building and poignant prose, the penultimate title in this series will have fans anxiously anticipating the upcoming conclusion.

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2015
Grades 7-10 In this penultimate volume in the Obsidian Mirror series, Fisher continues to tease readers with compelling plotting, but she resolves only one of many entangled plot threads before setting the scene for the conclusion. While Oberon is caught in Summer's web, hooded men invade Wintercombe Abbey and force Jake into the Mirror. Sarah, able to make herself invisible, sneaks through with him, and the pair find themselves in Paris, 1792, at the whim of Moll, a clever time-traveling thief from Jake's past. Moll has news, however: Jake's father, David, is there, too, and he is about to be executed. While they scheme to rescue David, the others seek to identify where Jake and Sarah are to mount a rescue of their own. Meanwhile, Janus lurks in the background. Fisher's genre mixing is as successful as ever, and while the labyrinthine story is challenging and a little crowded, it has lost none of its addictive appeal. Though readers might be flummoxed by the twisty plot, at this point they are likely in it for the long haul. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Fans of the first two books in Fisher's popular and well-received series will likely be eager to get their hands on this one, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)