The Rise of Issa Igwe, by Shanna Miles, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Rise of Issa Igwe, by Shanna Miles (October 2024, Union Square Kids, middle grade), combines time travel with another favorite subgenre of mine, the magical boarding school. and I enjoyed it lots!

Issa did not want to go to the Siren School.  She wanted to travel with her parents.  But her magical gift of being a conduit for the dead was out of control, and her parents felt she needed a structured education.  So off to boarding school it was.  

The school isn't awful.  There's the chance to make friends for the first time, lots of magic to learn, and a beautiful campus...but before Issa can change her mind about not wanting to be there, tragedy strikes, and her parents are killed driving away from the drop-off.  

Issa knows that one of the classes taught at the Siren School is horology...the magic of bending time.  And if time can be bent, maybe the past can be undone, and she can save her parents.  So along with all the nice school stuff--friends and magical animals and such--she's driven to learn more magic as quickly as possible. 

The school might offer great classes, but it also offers nightmares, hinted at by its past of plantation slavery, its disturbing headmistress, and warnings to the current students about the Night Children.  And the more she sees of her new school, the more Issa is distracted from her personal goal by the growing realization of the horror at the heart of the school.  A horror that plans to add her to the graves of many other past students.....

In short, it's a fun story of a plucky smart girl vs ancient evil, with interesting twists, including the time slipping at the end.  Middle grade fans of magical schools should eat it up, fans of horror, though, might be a bit let down, as I was, by the horror turning out to be relatively straightforward and not as deliciously creepy as the Night Children made it sound.  It's also not one for pure time travel fans--the time travel bit was there to drive Issa's story and not a point in its own right, and it ended up happening in a way that didn't feel quite earned.

That being said, the mix of it all made for good reading, and the successful confrontation with the evil at the school's heart was beautifully earned by Issa's stubbornness and strength of character, with the help of friends, the ancestors and their magic, a mysteriously haunting boy, and two sweet cats!