The Trials of Morrigan Crow
by Jessica Townsend (Little, Brown, 2017); audiobook read by Gemma Whelan (Hachette, 2017)
A magical adventure in the mode of early Harry Potter books (and rather better written), yet the narrative drive sputters on its fuel of high-octarine imagination, and while Morrigan and Jupiter have real personality, other characters—particularly the antagonists—are unmitigated extremes.