French filmmaker Besson (La Femme Nikita
) tries his hand at middle-grade fantasy; unfortunately, the results are thumbs-down. Half the book sets up the action: Arthur, 10, lives with his grandmother while his parents seek work elsewhere. His grandfather, an erstwhile anthropologist specializing in African tribes, disappeared nearly four years earlier. Grandma is out of money and a sinister developer with designs on her property is turning the screws. After antique dealers haul off Grandpa's artifacts (which they value at $300—but Grandma still winds up three dollars shy of what she needs to forestall eviction), Arthur finds clues that explain Grandpa's disappearance. One rather simplistic plot turn after another leads him to the Minimoys, a race of tiny people living in the garden. The pace picks up exponentially as Arthur joins the nasty but beautiful Princess Selenia in a mission to Necropolis, to seek his grandfather, his grandfather's treasure and to confront "M. the cursed," archenemy of the Minimoys. The action-adventure scenes feature some nice details (M.'s henchmen ride mosquitoes; the Minimoys attack them with a catapult that fires raisins) but loose threads and lapses in logic abound. One such thread, suggesting marriage between Arthur and Selenia, seems farfetched given his age and her malice. A sequel, Arthur and the Forbidden City
(whose title suggests that the hero may finally get to Necropolis), is due this fall. Ages 8-12. (May)
