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Title : The Serpent's Secret, by Sayantani Dasgupta
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The Serpent's Secret, by Sayantani Dasgupta

The Serpent's Secret, by Sayantani Dasgupta (Scholastic, Feb. 2018), is a wild ride through a fantasy world full of demons, snakes, moon magic, flying horses, and a baby star nursery presided over by Albert Einstein (yep!).  It's starts in fine swinging style.  It's Kiranmala's 12th birthday, and Halloween in Parsippany, New Jersey is about to get underway....and everything seems ordinary. But Kiran's parents have vanished when she gets home from school, leaving a cryptic note, and a demon invades her home, trashing the place and trying to eat her alive.  The timely arrival of two crush worthy boys on winged horses helps her escape the demon, and take her off with them...and that's just the beginning of her problems.

Turns out, all times Kiran's parents told her she was an Indian princess, and all the fantastical stories they told, had a lot of truth in them.  Whisked away to another dimension, full of magic and wonders (and demons) by the two princes, Kiran is determined to keep her focus on finding her demon-kidnapped parents.  And when the nicer of the two princes gets trapped in a spell, he has to be saved as well.

So Kiran is left with Neel (the grouchier prince, who has a complicated family backstory of his own) to go with her on a journey to the impossible place her parents are trapped, guided by riddles and a map of lands that randomly move from place to place.   Dangers and unexpected helpers await, and to her surprise, Kiran finds herself become friends with Neel....

Kiran is a great character who wants to be competent and not need rescuing, and she's well on her way to being that person, but she is (totally understandably, being only just turned 12) a bit out of her depth in this magical dimension in which she has found herself.  The bravest thing she does, in all sincerity, is to keep her head when confronted with the impossible.  The hardest thing she has to do, also in all sincerity, is not to scream in frustration at Neel, who is really not an open, helpful explainer of what the heck has happened (I'm sore at Neel, for blaming Kiran for something that isn't her fault, and I would have screamed at him like crazy if I'd been there....).

The adventures are exciting, without being overplayed, and the strange-nesses, likewise, are not so over emphasized and overwrought that they become tedious.  There are funny elements (funnier if you think demon snot is amusing, which I don't...), disturbing elements involving way too many snakes, and bits that make you think about quantum physics.  Plus winged horses whose voices Kiran can hear, that will delight young magical animal fans.  So something for everyone!

The Author's Note at the end explains how the story is based on the traditional folktales of West Bengal, India, that the author learned from her own family.  Reading this made me mentally add a certain gravitas to my impression of the book, as it is not just a fun story but an own-voices one that is new to the table of American middle grade fantasy.  I look forward to Kiran's next adventure!

Here's the Kirkus review, which hits many of the same notes....

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