This gentle adventure is just right for readers who dream of the beauty of fairy realms more than the dangers lurking therein.
The roving merchant city, Thunder Rake, rolls about the countryside "like a gargantuan living creature," hawking its goods far and wide. Cymbril, the famed "Thrush of the Rake," must sing for the market-goers wherever the Rake takes her, or whenever Master Rombol commands. She yearns for her freedom and snatches what little she can by sneaking along the alleyways and rooftops of Thunder Rake at night, unearthing buried secrets and forgotten magic by moonlight. (She's a bit like Philip Pullman's Lyra in her beloved Oxford.) When Master Rombol brings aboard a captured elfin boy, Cymbril finally finds an ally and hope for a new life; however, the elf is not the only new addition to the city. Something else has begun to roam the Rake at night that would make escape a very dangerous affair. Yet, what threat isn't worth facing to be free of one's cage? That is precisely what Cymbril seeks to find out.
Though suspense weaves its way into the story, the overall feel is akin to poking about in an eccentric old lady's house--if that lady were a witch, that is--placing it somewhere between The Secret Garden and Howl's Moving Castle. The Star Shard is less about the risks of entering the wild unknown and more about what it takes to reach the wild unknown in the first place. --Julia Smith, blogger and children's bookseller emerita