Nic Blake and the Remarkables

English language

Published April 4, 2023 by Balzer + Bray.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-322513-8

No rating (1 review)

It’s not easy being a Remarkable in the Unremarkable world. Some things are cool—like getting a pet hellhound for your twelfth birthday. Others, not so much—like not being trusted to learn magic because you might use it to take revenge on an annoying neighbor.

All Nic Blake wants is to be a powerful Manifestor like her dad. But before she has a chance to convince him to teach her the gift, a series of shocking revelations and terrifying events launch Nic and two friends on a hunt for a powerful magic tool she’s never heard of...to save her father from imprisonment for a crime she refuses to believe he committed.

1 edition

lastblossom reviewed Nic Blake and the Remarkables by Angie Thomas

A decidedly nuanced look at the "kids save the world" genre, with tons of fun and lore in a fast-paced adventure.

No rating

There's so much I want to gush about in this book, it's actually kind of hard to pick a starting point. Kids have to save the world a lot, it would seem. But what happens when those kids grow up, and the world continues to need saving? Nic Blake is a superfan of a popular book series about magical kids who go to magical school and have to save the world from an evil man. A series of events reveals that the books aren't quite as fictional as she thought, and she's next up when it comes to world-saving heroics. But her adventure isn't quite as rosy as the books, and it turns out even the books left out a couple details. It's the exact sort of thing I've always wanted to see discussed in MG. The kind of absolutely wild danger that characters in these novels go through has …

There's so much I want to gush about in this book, it's actually kind of hard to pick a starting point. Kids have to save the world a lot, it would seem. But what happens when those kids grow up, and the world continues to need saving? Nic Blake is a superfan of a popular book series about magical kids who go to magical school and have to save the world from an evil man. A series of events reveals that the books aren't quite as fictional as she thought, and she's next up when it comes to world-saving heroics. But her adventure isn't quite as rosy as the books, and it turns out even the books left out a couple details. It's the exact sort of thing I've always wanted to see discussed in MG. The kind of absolutely wild danger that characters in these novels go through has got to leave a mark. And in this case, it absolutely does. There's a very nuanced human element to all the characters in this, even the antagonists (especially the antagonists?), which I really appreciated, and I'm surprised how much I felt for everyone involved. Nic is a relatable MC, with her own goals, skills, cleverness, and personal fears, and she makes a believable hero that I really want to cheer for. (Also, her puppy is super cute.) Combine that with an honest look at what it means to be a black person in today's world, and you get an incredibly strong read that had me hooked all the way through.

Also! I KNOW that books in a series often have cliffhanger endings, but that didn't stop me from absolutely yelling when I got to the end of this book. What a setup, what a payoff, and what a cliffhanger. When's the next one coming out? Please, I need it.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books for an advance copy! All thoughts in this review are my own.