The Wrinkled Crown

Nesbet’s (A Box of Gargoyles) charming though predictable fantasy introduces Linny, about to turn 12. In her mountain village of Lourka, that milestone will keep her out of danger, since any girlchild who has ever touched a lourka (the village’s eponymous musical instrument) will be spirited away by evil Voices on her 12th birthday. Linny has not only touched a lourka, she has fashioned one of her own; yet when the day comes, the Voices take her best friend Sayra instead. Linny ventures beyond her mountains for a way to bring Sayra back, discovering in the strange lands of the Broken City that there is an ancient prophecy she resembles about the Girl with the Lourka, and that she is being swept up into a revolution far beyond her control. Spritely characterization, complex worldbuilding, and efforts to create a landscape of moral ambiguity nearly balance Nesbet’s thoroughly telegraphed plot and tendency to drop threads of story. Linny herself, despite being something of a cliché of the spirited heroine, has enough interiority and dimension to maintain interest. Ages 8–12. (Nov.)