Thieves of Weirdwood

Thieves of Weirdwood
By Christian McKay Heidicker
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2020. Fiction.

For 12-year-olds, Wally Cooper and Arthur Benton are expert thieves. It helps that they are both unusually motivated; Arthur longs to be just like the gentleman thief Garnett Lacroix from his favorite adventure books and free his drunkard father from the crippling debt that has loan sharks in his pursuit; and Wally has his brother's looming mental hospital bills to consider. When Arthur sees a girl in golden robes walk into an otherwise derelict old manor, Arthur is convinced he's found the perfect con -- they'll break in and steal enough treasure to never think about money again. What they find instead, is an entrance to a realm of nightmares and a secret society tasked with preserving the veil between the real world and the Fae world. Suddenly, Arthur and Wally are tangled into a mystery much bigger than either of them could imagine and it's up to them to save their city and the veil between the worlds.

This is an incredibly sophisticated, slightly-scary fantasy from Newbery Honoree and Utah-based author Christian McKay Heidicker -- writing under the suitably chilling pen name William Shivering. With a complex plot and truly admirable world-building, you might think that character development would suffer; but even with so much going on, we see Arthur, Wally and a sizeable cast of compelling background characters grow and change as the story goes on. This is the type of book where small details may seem extraneous but in the end they all tie together. This page-turning, cliff-hanger-ending book is sure to be popular with readers who like unusual fantasy and aren't too scared of monsters.

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