Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 09/01/2023 This droll tale features a narcissistic wizard and a lad with a strong tendency to fade into the background. In the land of Nefaria, where evil schemes are practically a daily occurrence, self-dubbed Great Wizard Matt has concocted a particularly fiendish one: to assemble an army of bespelled young children and stage a coup, because no grownups will be willing to fight them. Thanks to a spell that makes everyone forget them, the children aren’t missed, and that particularly applies to 11-year-old Bobert Bougainvillea, who, even before being sucked into the wizard’s magical gumball dispenser alongside 199 other kids, had problems being noticed. Can Bobert rise from anonymity to find a way to free the children? Eventually he does, but as the wizard spitefully turned him into a small sloth, performing the complicated and silly counterspell goes . . . very . . . slowly, keying a climax that likewise stretches out to excruciating length. The pacing ploy is a clever twist, but even patient readers may be tempted to skip ahead to the happy ending. - Copyright 2023 Booklist.