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Essays & Reviews
  The Silver Glove





The Silver Glove


  "[Charnas] handles the human relationships so truthfully that I have no apology about recommending this "Young Adult" novel to serious adult fantasy readers. The [books in this series] are exciting, the tension is unrelenting, the people and places are wonderously real."  
  Orson Scott Card,
Hatrack River reviews
 
  Buy This eBook
 
" . . . sinister Dr. Brightner . . . is installed as the new school psychologist the same day Val's magic Gran runs away from her nursing home. A renegade wizard, Brightner is after souls, and he's been trying to get Gran to his clinic for 'research'. Val is horrified to find that he is trying to seduce her mother, who has long denied Gran's magic and doesn't see the threat. This is a book to relish: told in Charnas's nearly perfect first-person narration, Val's engaging personality of savoir-faire and innocence is judiciously mixed with a flying carpet, a deliciously scary Indian witch and a wonderful final confrontation in Central Park."
Publishers Weekly

". . . there are wonderful touches throughout as magic wreaks mayhem, using everyday items both as talismans (the silver glove of the title) and dangers (stalking bicycles, killer kites) . . . most entertaining!"
Other Realms
 
  " . . . an exciting tale involving good and bad sorcerers, a wicked school psychologist, a grandmother who turns herself into a cat . . . Descriptions of The Claw (which the evil sorcerer sends in many guises to claim [Val]) rival Stephen King spine chillers . . . Having just finished reading this novel with 140 students, I can report an enthusiastic 'thumbs up'."
  Highly recommended, Reading Specialist, Delaware City

  " . . . Forceful but gently humorous."
  Kirkus

  "Charnas excels at making magic a believeable part of her city, and her characters real city dwellers . . . magic is well handled: the good forces can't use their magic directly against the evil Dr. Brightner and his minions, but must turn Brightner's own attempts to hurt them back on him. It's a clever, believable book."
  Locus


An Excerpt:
As the Saturday flea market began to break up, I helped Gran turn her card table on its side to fold its legs up. I was boiling with questions.

I said, "You can't disappear *again* now, Gran, not until you teach me how to really use the silver glove. I don't know anything about what it can do — "

Gran pointed. "Look!"

There was evil Dr. Brightner at one of the gates in the fence, talking with a young policeman. Brightner must have waited outside my building and followed me, figuring that sooner or later I would lead him to my magic grandmother — and, like a jerk, I did.

We were trapped inside the fence around the flea market. Brightner had been a cop himself once. All he had to say was that Gran had run away from a nursing home, addled and paranoid, and that I was a "troubled teen".

Hands in the pockets of his beautiful cashmere coat, he ambled toward us down the aisle between the vendors' stalls. I could see his toothy, triumphant smile.

Granny Gran caught me by the hand and dragged me back to the big, corner carpet stall, where only the largest of the rugs still lay unrolled on the cement. Gran pulled me onto the middle of the carpet with her.

The carpet seller said, "Hey!"

Brightner burst into a run.

Gran pointed her finger at the center rosette design in the carpet and muttered something that sounded like "twelve-o'clock high!" The carpet gave a lurch, turned slightly, and shot straight up into the sky, with me and Gran aboard.

I shrieked a shriek they must have heard in New Jersey. It was a short shriek, because the carpet went up like an express elevator, the kind that leaves your breath behind with your stomach at ground level. Past the edge of the carpet, which I was clutching with both hands, I saw Dr. Brightner down below. He stood with his legs braced apart and his hands on his hips, just staring up after us, while everybody else down there, including the rug vendor, danced around screaming and pointing skyward.

   
    Read more about the Sorcery Hall series >>    
Editions:
Electric Story e-version August 2011 Kindle:
ePub:
ISBN:
978-1-59729-064-7 978-1-59729-067-8
none at present
 
Wildside Press Paperback October 2001 ISBN: 158715479X  
Bantam Paperback March 1988 ISBN: 0553054708