Frances and the Werewolves of the Black Forest

August 1, 2023
More reanimated corpses rise to menace stalwart Swiss tinkerer Frances Stenzel and an expanding crew of allies in this sequel to Frances and the Monster (2022). Forced to flee into the Black Forest when her train to Brussels is diverted, 12-year-old Frances goes from hunter (in the opener) to hunted for the refinements she made to her great-grandfather Albrecht's imperfect method of bringing the dead to life. As it turns out, bad actors are conducting their own experiments at Fanggarten, an isolated nearby castle. While trying to elude a sinister hunter, reclaim Albrecht's stolen notebook, and free a group of local villagers seized as experimental subjects, Frances is pursued by moaning revenants, suddenly feral pet dogs, and unnaturally large wolves. Despite struggling with social skills--in part a result of being raised in secret for years--Frances has and enlists allies galore, ranging from a snotty mechanical butler and a chimpanzee with a large sign language vocabulary to her parents, Victor and Mary (wink, wink), and a group of abandoned village children, including one who is deaf. The author opens with a note about different sign languages and shows a knack for describing hand and finger motions clearly. Though the book is set in 1940, there is no mention of Nazis and but one oblique reference to the war. Despite plenty of undead bodies, gunfire, animal attacks, and massive explosions, the casualties, if any, are scrupulously kept offstage. The cast reads white. A rollicking adventure. (Adventure. 9-13)

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