Amari and the Despicable Wonders (Amari and the Night Brothers)

Amari has been cast out of the Bureau of Supernatural Investigations and has lost her magic, stolen by Dylan. On the plus side, her brother Quinton is awake and once again back to being the superstar agent. Quinton is determined to keep Amari safe, but when she finds out that Dylan has a terrible plan to destroy the Bureau, she can no longer sit back and do nothing. With her friends, Amari starts to try and find the Despicable Wonders before Dylan can find and use them.

Amari and the Despicable Wonders is the third book about Amari and it is a series I have really enjoyed. Amari is such an excellent heroine, and she is also such a strong role model for girls. She has her flaws, but her heart is always in the right place. I found this book very dark and, in places, tense and scary. It is such a gripping adventure; the reader is sucked into the supernatural world as if they have never been away!

This could have been another quest-type story, but it never slipped into that sort of formulaic read. Instead, we are introduced to more places and characters. My particular favourite is Mrs Chamberlain and I love the clothes! The cover, once again by Godwin Apkan, is yet another eye-catching sight - the characters are exactly as I imagine them - no mean feat. There are also some wonderful internal illustrations.

Whilst this felt like the end, I was so happy to read there is more to come. Amari is truly a magical character, in both senses of the word!

400 pages / Reviewed by Jacqueline Harris, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 9+

Amazing Amari is back again and her third adventure, Amari and the Despicable Wonders, is utterly gripping from start to finish. Teenage magician Amari now faces adversaries, distrust and outright hatred from all sides; the new Prime Minister of the Bureau of Supernatural Investigations, where Amari is a Junior Agent, is using devious mind control to rule the Bureau and push forward with her cunning plan to banish and ban all magicians. Meanwhile, the League of Magicians is now under the dark and deeply destructive control of Amari's former training partner, Dylan Van Helsing who has harnessed ancient foul magic to become a feared, hunted and threatening enemy of everything the Bureau stands for.

Amari's beloved and heroic brother, Quinton, has returned but even he and Amari face their own clashes against each other. A war is brewing, a war that will rip apart families, friendships and both the supernatural and known world and unleash the Despicable Wonders with the darkest magic that can never be undone.

The world that author BB Alston has created in the Amari books is simply electric. Painstakingly intricate details (supernaturals of all sizes with tiny, flightless fairies getting journalistic supernatural scoops by hiding out in motel walls) to hugely atmospheric scenes such as the aura and malevolence that writhes through the prisons of the most evil supernaturals - the Sightless Depths - that Amari and her loyal friends must face.

The scale of the world Alston has created is magnificent, magical and casts a spell over the reader, creating a superb cinematic reading experience. The characters themselves have grown in wisdom, bravery, beliefs and loyalties. Every one of them is tested along the way. Circling around Amari are the young friends Elsie, Lara and Jayden who make a formidable and fierce team. The dangers they facel are heart-stopping at times - there are so many times that the author takes his reader's nerves right to the edge with his plot twists and turns.

The constant blurring of lines between the different forms of magic make the story extra tense and riddled with dilemmas and moral choices for the characters - Amari most of all. That, I think, is a huge strength and quality in the book; Amari is constantly on a knife edge of who to place her trust in and where her priorities must lie. Does she want to save the worlds or just those she loves? Can she do both? What will be the ultimate price for her actions along the way? Throughout the adventures we are beside Amari, rooting and empathising with her, answering these questions as she tries to track down the list of Despicable Wonders - anti-magick inventions that will give the owner the ultimate, invincible and destructive powers.

The idea of a person's Destiny and taking the right path are central to this story. The first person narrative is exceptional; we are privy, as the reader, to all that Amari thinks and discovers and to all that she keeps from her friends and family to protect them. The entire book is high intensity, pure adrenaline and with a real sense of a clock ticking down to an unavoidable finale. Alston has a fantastic skill to push the fraught danger and heart racing fear as far as possible in a book 'for children', and always tempers the tension with scenes reflecting the warmth of the characters' bonds or the introduction of more quirky, humourous individuals (like Peek-a-Boo, a lively young ghost). 

Amari and the Despicable Wonders is a stunning third journey into the supernatural. It sweeps the reader away into a breathtakingly fantastical world. Magic.

400 pages / Reviewed by Jenny Caddick, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 9+