Foxheart by Claire Legrand - ADVISABLE

Legrand, Claire.  Foxheart.  469 pages.  Harper Collins, 2016.  $16.99.  Language: G, Violence: PG, Sexual Content: G.

When the girl was three-years-old, she was left on the doorstep of a convent.  She wouldn’t tell them her name, so the nuns called her “Girl” and some of the other girls called her “Pig” or “Witch”, or all three: “Pigwitch Girl.”  When the girl was twelve-years-old, she saw wolves attack a nun and she heard screams of the other girls.  She thought he was the Wolf King, but that couldn’t be because he was the one who protected the lands from witches.  She escaped the convent to become a master thief with her faithful dog, Fox.  She was stealing when she was caught by a boy her age—Sly Boots.  He was not a good thief and his parents were under a terrible spell.  Girl chooses the name Quicksilver and agrees to help Sly Boots steal medicines for his parents.  In the market, they are meet an old witch who changes time.  The witch knows the girl’s real name and gives Quicksilver three guesses to know why.  Quicksilver guesses on her third wish that the old woman is herself and she is right.  Anastazia has fought the Wolf King for many lifetimes.  Both she and the Wolf King are trying to find the bones of the seven first ones—the first magical creatures who came from the same star.  Anastazia wants to destroy them to save her race, the witches.  She takes Quicksilver and Sly Boots back in time to teach Quicksilver about magic and to look for the skeletons.  Quicksilver isn’t so sure she wants to spend her life looking for bones, she’d rather be a thief.  She promises Sly Boots that she will get him back to his parents, she just needs to figure out how.

Foxheart is a dark, epic fantasy adventure with plenty of peril and surprises.  Quicksilver is a most unlikely and often unlikeable heroine.  Having never known kindness, she isn’t kind.  Yet, she still manages to become heroic and not just by her strength.  She learns the power of forgiveness and friendship.  And it is only when working with others, “Many is Mighty”, that they are able to destroy the bones of the first ones.              

EL-ADVISABLE.  Samantha Hastings, MA, MLS.