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A review by book_concierge
Bad Unicorn by Platte F. Clark
2.0
I am clearly NOT the target audience for this sci-fi fantasy adventure knock-off of Harry Potter.
There are two main domains: The Magrus (i.e. the place of magic) and the Techrus (the “technological” world … i.e. reality). In between these two worlds is the Mesoshire. At least I think that’s right. I frankly lost interest in keeping everything straight.
Anyway, there’s a book – the Codex of Infinite Knowability – that been lost to the ages, but middle-schooler Max Spencer finds it under his bed. He doesn’t know he has magical abilities, but he is a direct descendant of the author so is the only one who can read any of the material in the Codex.
Princess the Destroyer is a magic unicorn who is a spoiled brat intent on wreaking havoc everywhere. She’s got a toady wizard who helps her (or kowtows to her to avoid being destroyed). She wants the Codex so she can move freely between worlds.
Max and his friends Sarah and Dirk, along with Dwight (a dwarf), and Glenn (a talking dagger) find themselves transported through time to a far future Techrus, where all humans are dead and the world is run by machines with rudimentary AI capabilities.
Anyway …. It took me two months to slog through this and I completed it only because of a challenge and I just refused to give up. There were a couple of things that redeemed it. I loved Sarah. She rises to the challenge every time. She’s strong, intelligent, a born leader and will never give up. Max also, eventually, rises to the challenge of being the leader.
I do admit that the last couple of chapters were pretty interesting with Max going up against Princess and her giant killing machines.
So, I can understand why some kids would find this entertaining, but I still thought it was pretty terrible. Clark spent way too much time trying to prove how clever he is rather than crafting a compelling and entertaining story.
Oh, and it ends in a cliffhanger because Clark cannot trust that his audience will want to read more so he has to try to force them to read another book.
There are two main domains: The Magrus (i.e. the place of magic) and the Techrus (the “technological” world … i.e. reality). In between these two worlds is the Mesoshire. At least I think that’s right. I frankly lost interest in keeping everything straight.
Anyway, there’s a book – the Codex of Infinite Knowability – that been lost to the ages, but middle-schooler Max Spencer finds it under his bed. He doesn’t know he has magical abilities, but he is a direct descendant of the author so is the only one who can read any of the material in the Codex.
Princess the Destroyer is a magic unicorn who is a spoiled brat intent on wreaking havoc everywhere. She’s got a toady wizard who helps her (or kowtows to her to avoid being destroyed). She wants the Codex so she can move freely between worlds.
Max and his friends Sarah and Dirk, along with Dwight (a dwarf), and Glenn (a talking dagger) find themselves transported through time to a far future Techrus, where all humans are dead and the world is run by machines with rudimentary AI capabilities.
Anyway …. It took me two months to slog through this and I completed it only because of a challenge and I just refused to give up. There were a couple of things that redeemed it. I loved Sarah. She rises to the challenge every time. She’s strong, intelligent, a born leader and will never give up. Max also, eventually, rises to the challenge of being the leader.
I do admit that the last couple of chapters were pretty interesting with Max going up against Princess and her giant killing machines.
So, I can understand why some kids would find this entertaining, but I still thought it was pretty terrible. Clark spent way too much time trying to prove how clever he is rather than crafting a compelling and entertaining story.
Oh, and it ends in a cliffhanger because Clark cannot trust that his audience will want to read more so he has to try to force them to read another book.