Nadya Skylung and the Masked Kidnapper

By: Jeff Seymour

Narrated by: Hannah Jay

Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

In this middle-grade sequel to Nadya Skylung and the Cloudship Rescue, author Jeff Seymour delivers another breathtaking fantasy adventure, starring an extraordinary heroine and set in an unforgettable world where ships can fly.

Nadya Skylung paid a high price when she defeated the pirates on the cloudship Remora: She lost her leg. But has she lost her nerve too? When Nadya and the rest of the crew of the cloudship Orion reach the port of Far Agondy, they have a lot to do, including a visit to Machinist Gossner's workshop to have a prosthetic made for Nadya. But though the pirates are far away across the Cloud Sea, Nadya and her friends are still not safe. A gang leader called Silvermask is kidnapping skylung and cloudling children in Far Agondy. When Nadya's friend Aaron is abducted, Nayda will stop at nothing to save him and the other missing kids, and put a stop to Silvermask once and for all.

©2019 Jeff Seymour (P)2019 Listening Library

Critic reviews

"An entertaining and engaging fantasy adventure that deals sensitively with the topic of disability. Will appeal to late elementary and early middle school fans of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series and similar middle grade speculative fiction." (School Library Journal)

"In this second series installment, Seymour delivers more danger, new characters, and a journey of self-discovery. Helquist's occasional full- and double-page spreads give life to the more action-packed sequences, but this volume deals too with the repercussions of Nadya's actions and her emotional struggles as she learns what it means to be a hero." (Booklist)

"Seymour paints a realistic picture of Nadya's adjustment to the loss of her leg; even her can-do optimism sags as she contemplates the reality of living without it... An action- and machine-filled follow-up for fans of the first novel." (Kirkus Reviews)

First volume fun, this one's left hanging

I know the author, and wanted to like this book. However, things are brought to a rushed ending. That's probably literally true, because the publisher didn't want the proposed next volume. If you can focus on it section by section, that doesn't matter, but I listened to it in a fairly short space of time, so it may work better for someone who listens occasionally, chapter by chapter.

It's been a long while since my daughter was 12, and my oldest granddaughter is as yet only 6 (plus some, as she would insist on adding). While the heroine isn't human, none of the personalities in the story are treated as not human. Some aspects are pre-teen, but some of her reactions are to me very grown up, in a manner I find incongruous. Perhaps it's because gender and age don't let me put myself into the mind and emotions of a 12-year-old girl, but to me she doesn't ring true. The cliffhangers (chapters) are for me too frequent. I know the genre calls for leaving no time to breathe, but... However, anyone reading this review should keep in mind that I've not been in the target audience for many decades!

The storyline remains imaginative, the world intriguing. Perhaps some day Jeff will be given the opportunity to take the ideas and "world" and craft these building blocks into another, and more complete novel. At least I hope so!!