The Oaken Throne

Book: The Oaken Throne (Book Two of The Deptford Histories)
Author: Robin Jarvis
Audience: Grades 4-6
In a Nutshell: two young enemies, a bat and a squirrel, team up to fight evil and destruction. I think.

I'll be straight with you: I couldn't do it. I couldn't keep reading this book. I was supposed to read it for a review group, but I just can't. It's an animal fantasy, and I like those. The author is well-reviewed and respected and all that, and I'm sure plenty of people get into his books. It's got similar appeal to Redwall, but with a much higher creep factor, which would be a selling point for fans of creep. It just seems overdone to me- overwritten and overdramatic. Here's an example of dialogue as Morwenna the "treacherous handmaiden" squirrel poisons her kindly mistress: "'Now you have drunk from the cup of my ambition,' she spat venomously. 'To me it seems sweet, but I fear you have not found it so. '" Maybe it's just me, but I can't get into that. It's rodent fantasy with Shakespearean hack tendencies, complete with thou's and thee's thrown in for flavor. The time period is medieval, but it still doesn't work for me, like the author is trying too hard to make squirrels seem truly threatening.

I'm not even going to get into the plot, because I have no idea what happens past page 63. I read the entire Deptford Mice Trilogy thinking I would start liking it more eventually, but I never really did. Now here's the prequel trilogy, and this is as far as I go. They're not badly written, I just...can't. Sorry.