The second book in the delightful series about the Strangeworlds Travel Agency, whose suitcases transport travelers to other worlds. Twelve-year-old Flick Hudson has been grounded by her parents for staying out all night. Little do they know that it was because she was helping Strangeworld’s custodian Jonathan Mercator save the multiverse in the first volume.
Luckily, Flick and Jonathan manage to get her away, just in time to receive an urgent letter from Pirate Queen Nyfe. Ships in Nyfe’s oceanic world of the Break are mysteriously disappearing at an alarming rate, and their flat world itself seems to be shrinking. The danger threatens both the pirates and the mermaids of the world, although both also seem bent on fighting each other. Can Flick and Jonathan (and Jonathan’s visiting cousin Avery) find a way to save all the inhabitants?
Pirates and mermaids abound in this seafaring adventure mystery. While there’s action aplenty, Flick also shows personal growth in this volume as she gains more control over her own magical powers. Her concerns about the environment, both in the Break and in her own world, feel authentic and non-preachy. She and Avery are also, it seems, developing crushes on each other. We learn a little more, too, about the disappearance of Jonathan’s father, which we first heard of in Book 1.
Jonathan is subtly cued as transgender (e.g., with a reference to him wearing a binder), and author L. D. Lapinski has confirmed this, but his trans identity is incidental to the plot. There are also hints that he is attracted to other men. Flick and Jonathan read as White; Avery has light brown skin and black hair, and the Pirate Queen has brown skin and black hair.
Fun and fantastical in the best tradition of classic British children’s literature, but happily queerer.
