Olaf and Essex - Patti Calkosz - ★★

AUTHOR: Patti Calkosz

ILLUSTRATOR: Xiao

SERIES: The Magic Competents, #1

GENRE: Middle-Grade Fantasy Adventure.

PUBLICATION DATE: October 15, 2024

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A MG/YA book with some animals, some witches, and a magical baby. Started off well but soon became too haphazard for my liking. Also didn’t like some of the story development choices. This is an outlier review.

Plot Preview:

Olaf the bear and his best friend Essex the red fox, among other animals, live in Central Park of an alternate-reality New York City.

One night, Olaf ends up scaring away two witches by accident. While they fly away without any delay, they unintentionally leave behind a baby they had kidnapped to spit her father, NYPD’s Chief Magic Detector who is cracking down on the magic community. Olaf, who assumes the witches to be the baby’s parents, knows that he had felt sad when his mother had died many years ago, and so he must ensure that this baby doesn’t feel sad or lonely. He knows that Essex will help him. But what is the best way out – rear the little one themselves or somehow locate her parents in this huge city?

The story comes to us from the third-person perspective of several characters.

Bookish Yays:

🐻 Olaf and Essex: friends with distinct personalities. Olaf goes more by his heart while Essex follows her head. They are nice titular characters for the most part of the book. I found it funny how Essex learns everything she can about humans by secretly watching TV through their windows.

🐻 A few other nice characters, especially Helga and Hilda.

🐻 The idea of magic-competent humans and their persecution for nefarious reasons. This could have been handled better, but it was a great central conflict nonetheless.

🐻 Plenty of B&W illustrations throughout the book. They are perfect for the story. I loved all the graphics.

🐻 The cover is stunning!

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🦊 The story started off well, and I looked forward to how Olaf and Essex would keep/return the baby. Sadly, the proceedings become too disjointed as the plot progresses. There are needless tangents, there are detailed backstories that affect the contemporary pacing, there are too many characters with each having their own issues to handle. The overall effect was quite jumpy.

🦊 The above is made worse by the frequent character hopping. The story comes to us from too many characters, not all of whom are relevant to the central plot. Some of the perspectives are interesting, some feel more like they were added to extend the story. On the positive side, the shift in perspectives is clearly marked in the book, so there’s no confusion about who is talking.

🦊 There are way too many themes in the book. (Yup, you guessed it! A debut work with an overloaded kitchen sink!) Other than the core themes, we have dyslexia, judgement based on looks, body image issues, grief, abusive parents, kidnapping, parental death, spousal death, abandonment issues, animal death (natural and murder), toxic sibling relationships,… I stopped noting after a point. Some of these were necessary for the central plotline, most weren’t. I was especially unsure about the seemingly religious undertone of one particular thread connected to the divine presence of animal spirits.

🦊 The alternate Central Park was an interesting setting, what with witches and magic all around. However, the setting needed to be established better. I didn’t get why so many hibernators were still awake and active during winter time.

Bookish Nays:

😾 The cover, the title, and the blurb makes this sound like an entertaining magical adventure. However, the book goes too dark. I expected more focus on the two animals and the baby, but the animals get only a shared part of the spotlight and the baby was more of an afterthought in the proceedings, especially in between. I don’t think the title reflects the book accurately.

😾 At 350+ pages, this is too lengthy for a middle-grade novel. It might have still worked with a more focussed plot, but in its current structure, it feels more like it has been unnecessarily lengthened.

😾 It is quite confusing to have Helga and Hilda as the names of two sibling characters who play a key role. I kept muddling between the two of them as they are so similar in name and background, and later, in behaviour. Another perplexing naming choice was to have a cat (again, a central character) named Baby, when there was already an abandoned human baby referred to as ‘baby’. Imagine the discombobulation if someone is reading this book aloud to their child and has to distinguish between Baby and baby, who appear in the same scene multiple times!

😾 Too many scenes of animals being hurt, and several scenes of animals being killed and eaten. All of this is correct as per natural food chains, but did it really have to go so overboard in showing this? One or two instances would have been fine. I don’t even want to talk about the idea of an animal praying over their victim before attacking/killing them. Not a fan of human practices being imposed on animals.

😾 Too much talk of death and the spirit world, and a couple of main characters dying (not naturally.) I found especially awkward the scene where we learn that Olaf has taken some clothes (for disguise) from a dead human body in the park. It was just creepy!

😾 The story spans too long a time period without any indication of the passing of the months. Baby (the human, not the cat) even starts babbling and talking sensible sentences later in the story, when it still seems to be the same season roughly.

😾 The ending is somewhat rushed and abrupt.

😾 There are a few negative comments about physical traits such as bulbous noses and baldness, and remarks such as “Are you deaf?” Not something I like to see in children’s books.

😾 This sentence: “Magic was an amazing tool . . . just like guns. But like any tool, it could be utilized for good or for evil.” Please give me one good reason why this analogy needed to involve guns! It’s written for middle-graders! Why does a child that age (or any age) need to learn that guns are “amazing tools”?

This is supposed to be a middle-grade adventure (age group 8-12 years). So I was looking forward to a relaxing, light-hearted novel, but that didn’t happen. The story still has some nice moments and interesting magical battles, demonstrating highly creative thinking. But it has too much happening with not enough depth to any subplot or character.

I discovered only later that this is listed on Amazon as Book One of the ‘The Magic Competents’ series. If this is accurate, then the title is even more misleading because Olaf and Essex aren’t the magic competents at all. To be fair, the magic competent arc is much more attractive than the actual animals-find-human-baby arc. I wish the plotting and the packaging of the book had been revamped to focus more on the magic competents.

I feel somewhat guilty when an indie book doesn’t work for me. But there is no way I can enthusiastically recommend this story to middle-graders when it ticked so many red flags for me. With some strict editing and culling of extraneous content, (and perhaps a revised title and targeting an older reading audience), this book might work better.

That said, please note that this is very much an outlier review. As Edmund Wilson said, no two persons ever read the same book. So do go through the other reviews and take a more informed call on this novel.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author through her publicist. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Truly sorry it didn’t work out better.