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A review by ofliterarynature
Pieces and Players by Blue Balliett
4.0
Important pre-review tip: this book has cross-over characters from Balliett's 2 non-Vermeer books, Hold Fast and The Danger Box. I haven't read them, and they aren't absolutely necessary to understand this book, but reading them between books 3 & 4 may enhance the experience of book 4.
Diversity: the three main kids in the series are all bi/multi-racial, and have different family structures (lots of siblings, only child, single parent, etc). The series pulls on ideas from history, math, classic literature, art history and appreciation, and all kinds of pattern recognition (among other stuff I've probably forgotten. It's hella smart, guys). You might need to have a talk with your kids that correlation =/= causation.
TLDR: A good series, wicked smart but better for younger, age-appropriate readers who won't notice it's flaws.
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OKAY. The review:
This series is cursed. Cursed, I tell you!
Book 1 I thought was clever and intelligent, but complained that the use of coincidence to solve the mystery bordered on mystical and deemed it too unrealistic. By book 3 I got my wish - the coincidences were negligible, they didn't solve much of anything, it was very realistic! And incredibly boring. (Book 2 fell somewhere between the two of course).
Book 4 though. It had a great mystery with a good balance of useful/useless coincidence and actual detective work, and this time jumped straight over that 'maybe' border with the mystical and they straight up talked to a ghost. It was wonderful!
But Rebecca, you said it was cursed!
I did, and it's because I got all of my wishes for the last book in this series, but they were served along with a very, very, V E R Y healthy sized portion of [insert whiny teenager voice] p u b e r t y, ugh!
Maybe it's just me, but if this had been the first book instead of the last (that I know of) book, I would have dropped this in the DNF pile 3 minutes in (and very nearly did anyways). One of the charms of reading this series as an older reader is that the protagonists are kids, they're friends, they squabble over kid stuff and it's not much more complicated than that. That changed in book 4, but thank the gods that the worst of it showed up in clumps and I could push through and ignore it the rest of the time. I wish it wasn't there, but the book was still absolutely worth the read!
Diversity: the three main kids in the series are all bi/multi-racial, and have different family structures (lots of siblings, only child, single parent, etc). The series pulls on ideas from history, math, classic literature, art history and appreciation, and all kinds of pattern recognition (among other stuff I've probably forgotten. It's hella smart, guys). You might need to have a talk with your kids that correlation =/= causation.
TLDR: A good series, wicked smart but better for younger, age-appropriate readers who won't notice it's flaws.
.
.
.
OKAY. The review:
This series is cursed. Cursed, I tell you!
Book 1 I thought was clever and intelligent, but complained that the use of coincidence to solve the mystery bordered on mystical and deemed it too unrealistic. By book 3 I got my wish - the coincidences were negligible, they didn't solve much of anything, it was very realistic! And incredibly boring. (Book 2 fell somewhere between the two of course).
Book 4 though. It had a great mystery with a good balance of useful/useless coincidence and actual detective work, and this time jumped straight over that 'maybe' border with the mystical and they straight up talked to a ghost. It was wonderful!
But Rebecca, you said it was cursed!
I did, and it's because I got all of my wishes for the last book in this series, but they were served along with a very, very, V E R Y healthy sized portion of [insert whiny teenager voice] p u b e r t y, ugh!
Maybe it's just me, but if this had been the first book instead of the last (that I know of) book, I would have dropped this in the DNF pile 3 minutes in (and very nearly did anyways). One of the charms of reading this series as an older reader is that the protagonists are kids, they're friends, they squabble over kid stuff and it's not much more complicated than that. That changed in book 4, but thank the gods that the worst of it showed up in clumps and I could push through and ignore it the rest of the time. I wish it wasn't there, but the book was still absolutely worth the read!