  | Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 10/01/2021 In a departure from her creepy teen chill fests, Roux kicks off a middle-grade series set in the Dungeons & Dragons game’s “Forgotten Realms” universe with a tale of a sixth-grader who feels like an outsider at her boarding school for monsters. Though Zellidora was raised at the school by a pair of loving minotaur moms, she’s come to realize that she’s descended from the very humans who slay monsters like her schoolmates. A portrait of monster-slayer Allidora Steelstrike, sporting Zelli's same dark skin and woolly curls, in her schoolbook only further confirms her suspicions. And so the stage is set, as classmate allies ranging from a kindly, vegetarian bearowl to a fierce, if undersized, kobold sneak out with Zelli to meet her birth mother—and battle to save a village from a necromancer leading a horde of skeletal minions. Experienced gamers will feel at home here, while Zelli’s fretting about where she really belongs will keep newbies on a firm footing. Probert lavishes the mini-epic with dramatic, orange-highlighted ink-and-wash illustrations. A properly heroic series starter. - Copyright 2021 Booklist. Loading...
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