The Slug Queen Chronicles (Season One)
By S.O. Thomas
Hi! Do you believe in the tooth fairy? Well, Cricket certainly never did! That is, until her dad presented her with her mom’s journal. You see, Cricket’s mom had died as she was giving birth to Cricket, and then her birthday became a sad time because it was the day her mom had died. However, to celebrate this day, Cricket’s dad always gave her something to remember her mom by.
Cricket was a lot like her mom. She looked like her and she could see different colors of dust. The dust was a representation of something. For example, blue dust would appear when something intense would happen, like the sun shining brightly or the wind howling loudly.
As Cricket grew older, her dad met someone named Janice. Janice became Cricket’s stepmother, and Cricket loved Janice. She was nothing like the evil stepmother in Cinderella! Cricket’s dad and Janice had a son named Tristan. Cricket seemed to think that they paid attention only to the baby and not to her.
On Cricket’s twelfth birthday, she was presented with a journal. In the journal, it had her mom’s theories on tooth fairies. Yes, her mom believed that there were more than one tooth fairy, and when they took the teeth, they left something else behind.
Cricket wanted to prove her mom’s theory right, but her friend Penny had her doubts. However, they made an agreement that, if the experiment worked, they would continue exploring the theory. If the experiment did not work, they would let it go.
Cricket took one of her baby teeth that she had kept and put it under her pillow. Then, she and Penny waited until morning. When they woke up, they followed a trail of black dust to Tristan’s room. They found Tristan with his eyes wide open. At first, baby Tristan’s eyes were swamp green. Then he blinked and they changed back to brown. Before they left, they saw black dust coming out of his mouth. The black dust slowly spread throughout the house and infected her family. Janice became mean, and Cricket’s dad became distant, and Penny stopped being her friend.
Throughout school, all of the girls were mean to Cricket, including Penny, and she had a horrible time in the classroom. At lunch, she ran into a talking cat, and she thought that she was losing her mind. When she finally stopped to let the cat talk to her, she discovered that the tooth fairies had actually taken Tristan and the Tristan that she thought she had seen was actually a Slugwump that had been left in his place.
Cricket kept getting in trouble with Janice, because the Slugwump (who Janice thought was Tristan) kept doing crazy things, like walking out into the driveway (which Tristan himself could not do). Then, Fenlick (the talking cat) presented a way to her to get Tristan back. However, the path wasn’t easy, and people who seemed to be good were actually evil.
Will Cricket succeed on her journey to rescue Tristan, or will she fail and have a horrible life back with her parents who have been infected by the black dust? As I always say, read the book to find out!
A few helpful things I like to say about the books I read:
“Run and Get Mom” (how I describe the scariness factor – zero being not scary at all and five being majorly scary): 4
“Yucky-Lovey Stuff” (how I describe the romance factor – zero having no yucky-lovey parts in it and five having major yucky-lovey parts): 1
I give this book 5 wands.
I LOVED this book! It had magic and mystery and adventure all in one! This mysterious tale of friendships gone wrong and enemies with good intentions had me on the edge of my seat.
Source: Review Copy
