Candle-Ends: Reviews
Shelley Carpenter

The Scholar, The Sphinx and the Fang of Fenrir by A.R. Cook

The Scholar, The Sphinx and the Fang of Fenrir (Knox Publishing, 2014) is the second book in A.R. Cook’s young adult series, The Scholar and the Sphinx.

In this installment, readers are reunited with young, scholarly protagonist David Sandoval and his companions, Acacia, the sphinx; Gullen, the Master Huntsman; and Tanuki, the shape-shifting Japanese badger from the first book, The Shades of Nyx (Knox Publishing, 2013).

The heroes face another epic adventure filled with danger and wonder inside and outside the “Magic Curtain” that separates the human world from the worlds of legend, myth, and magic. With new friends Babba, the old Russian witch and keeper of the iron forest, and Tyr, the Lawgiver from Asgard, David must gather his wits and courage to stop the giant world-eating-wolf Fenrir who has joined forces with a mysterious new adversary who has plans for David and Acacia.

Cook again borrows from world mythologies—Greek, Egyptian, Norse, African, Russian, and Japanese to create a host of protagonists and antagonists, alike. Giants abound as well as animals of colossal proportion such as Slepnir, Tyr’s eight-legged battle horse.

Most notably, Cook is an adept storyteller and mixes imaginative, vivid description with sparkling vocabulary much like a potion one of her characters might concoct. For example, meet Babba Yaga:

The other woman, round and squat, smoked a foot-long pipe, the bowl of which was carved to look like a crow’s head. Long tresses of silver flowed from her head and a long pointed nose protruded from the deep ravines of cracks on her face. She eyed David, not saying a word, and only puffed tendrils of white smoke in the air. The smoke curled into the shapes of birds and cats that danced around her wide-brimmed hat.

Besides their vividness, the characters are complex. Cook gives each a unique voice and manner. They are distinct and often humorous. Babba’s character in particular is a scene-stealer and compliments David’s seriousness and Gullen’s know-it-all-ness with her funny wit, her mannerisms, and voice. “What do I know? I’m just old lady.” An old lady is the least of who Babba really is and readers will enjoy getting to know this quirky character.

There is also a nice cadence and rhythm to Cook’s writing. I enjoyed the variety in sentence structure and punctuation that peppered each chapter, each page. I spied some lovely sentences like this complex sentence that utilizes both consonance and simile to describe the setting from chapter fifteen: “A drizzle drooled down from the overcast sky, the clouds as slate gray as the pillars around him.”

What’s more, Cook continues the exciting pace. Each chapter builds on the previous in a steep story arc that leads straight up to the last page.

The novel is structured in sixteen numbered chapters. It contains a prologue, a glossary of mythological characters and a section called Moments in History. The prologue was very interesting: a mystery narrator with three personalities relates the first book to the reader giving key information concerning character, setting, and plot—thus a reader new to the series could easily begin with the second book. The glossary and Moments in History were also helpful. I referenced them several times during my reading. These added appendices show forethought and that Cook really knows her readers and their needs.

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A.R. Cook is the former book reviewer for the Gainesville Times in Northeast Georgia and more recently has written reviews for Toasted Cheese. Her first young adult novel is The Scholar, the Sphinx, and the Shades of Nyx (Knox Robinson Publishing, 2013). Her story “Derry’s Down, Deary” won the gold award in Toasted Cheese’s Three Cheers and a Tiger Writing Contest in the June 2013 issue. In 2011, she placed Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest 80th Annual Writing Competition for her play, Major Arcana, and in WD’s Science Fiction contest for her short story, “Psycho Babbles.” She has also written “Willow Weep No More,” published in the Tenebris Books’s Original Fairy Tales Anthology, and a short story, “The Saintly Stew,” published in the Georgia Museum of Art’s Kress Project anthology 2013. She likes sushi and sundaes (but not together). | Twitter: @ARCook_Writes | FaceBook: TheScholarAndTheSphinxSeries

Shelley Carpenter is TC’s Reviews Editor. Email: harpspeed[at]toasted-cheese.com