Captivate

Jones, Carrie. Captivate
Bloomsbury see St. Martins 2010 276p 16.99
978-1-59990-342-2 ms/hs Fantasy VG
A young soon-to-be pixie king persuades Zara to become his bride in order to save Nick, Zara’s true love, from certain death at the hands of a Valkyrie. Suspense builds then ebbs as the plot shifts from Nick’s peril to Zara’s turning pixie. Grades 7 and up. Fans of Need, the first in this series, will definitely want to read the second in the series to see what happens to Zara, Nick and friends. A young soon-to-be pixie king, Astley, arrives and claims to be a good pixie. He shows acts of kindness to Zara and friends just before the evil pixie king, Zara’s father, manages to escape the prison Zara and friends created. The bad pixie king goes on a feeding rampage. To make matters worse, a Valkyrie wants Nick for her own to become a warrior for Odin, the Norse god. As Nick is captured by the Valkyrie, Zara realizes an alliance with Astley is the only hope to save Nick. The action shifts from the peril the community faces with an evil pixie on the loose and the peril Nick faces at the hands of the Valkyrie to Zara’s conversion into a pixie. As much as Zara fought against pixies, she willingly becomes one. She is able to convince her friends, many of them “were” people, that she is still Zara and will not hurt them and that they all need to band together to find Nick. Possibly too many types of fantastical creatures for one story? Zara’s shift to a pixie causes the plot tension over Nick’s plight to take second place in this middle book of the series. Readers will eagerly await the third book in the series to see if Nick and Zara can be reunited. For diehard Need fans. Grades 7-12.
Recommended where Need, the first in the series, was popular. The first half of Captivate is filled with tension which disintegrates and focuses on the turning of Zara into a Pixie. Still, fans will read this book and eagerly await the sequel. Grades 7-12. McNicol(3),Lois
Pixies - Fiction