MIDDLE GRADE SPECULATIVE FICTION : The Aftermath by Tracy Wolff
ABOUT THE BOOK
What’s your myth?
Penelope Weaver has spent her whole life preparing to attend Anaximander’s Academy, where students learn how to bring to life the stories of Greek mythology as well as discover the Greek god whose principles they most embody. Penelope knows she’s an Athena—all smart, practical, and rule-following girls who take part in stories that matter are Athenas.
But when Penelope and her twin brother Paris arrive at Anaximander’s, it appears fate has other plans. Penelope isn’t placed with Athena but with students who are anything but practical and who prefer parties to rules. And that’s just the beginning. She’s given the world’s worst muse, her assigned tasks feel impossible, and the magic of Anaximander’s is overwhelming. Not to mention, there are two very different boys making her new life even more confusing.
But as things go from bad to dangerously worse, one thing becomes in a world where everything is fated to happen a certain way, some stories need to be rewritten. As the world around her shifts and cracks, Penelope is asked to forget everything she thought she knew to help create a better story…even if that changes every plan and breaks every rule.
REVIEW
Penelope's arrival at her new boarding school, Anaximander's Academy, goes nothing like she imagined. After a surprisingly difficult arrival, she's shocked to discover that she's not going to be part of Athena Hall as she has prepared her whole life to be; she's in Aphrodite Hall! She doesn't believe she belongs there and tries to come up with a way to get moved to Athena Hall with her twin brother, Paris. Her roommate, Fifi, proves to be a force of nature that carries Penelope along with her, which turns out to be not quite so bad. But strange things keep happening to Penelope that don't seem to happen to anyone else. Inadvertently ending up in the Underworld was not on her list of things to accomplish! Forget trying to finish her school career. She'll be lucky to make it through her first year. And what about her feelings about the unfairness of some of the myths she heard her whole life? Maybe there's more to all those stories than she ever thought, and just maybe, there's more to HER than she ever believed. With the help of her new friends, can she find a way to not only survive her new school, but thrive?
Penelope makes for a delightful heroine, a rather confused one as all her plans fall apart. The secondary characters add to the fun with their various characteristics and personalities. With plenty of action and some surprising twists and turns, middle grade readers will find much here to enjoy. Readers who enjoy Harry Potter or Percy Jackson should find much to like about Penelope and her friends and their adventures. The mythological world that Wolff has created is intriguing with plenty to be discovered both in this book and in future volumes. Some questions get answered by the end of the book, but a number of questions remain that will undoubted be explored in future books. A delightfully fun new book for middle grade fantasy lovers. Highly Recommended.
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