The only thing I know about Chris Abouzeid is that he’s male and his last name is a bit awkward to type. (So’s the word ‘awkward’, by the way.) ‘Anatopsis’, as a word, is also unknown to me; I’m having trouble even finding out what the word means in parts. I’ve half a mind to email the author and ask him. However, the book is a children’s fantasy novel that I read recently.

Princess Anatopsis Solomon lives in a world where humans have expanded off earth onto many other planets. On earth, at least, they can practice magic, but unfortunately magic creates athen, its opposite, as a sort of pollution. Beings on earth are split into mortal and immortal: immortals can do magic but they cannot actually create things. Mortals cannot do magic, but they’re actually creative. An immortal with mortal blood in his or her family tree is called a slag. Princess Ana (as she prefers) is a slag; her father is half-mortal. They don’t tell people that, though. The immortals live in a magical paradise with an environmental shield; the mortal live out with the athen and pollution in the ghetto.

Ana’s mother is Queen Solomon; she runs one of the two most important companies in the world. Her competitor is King Georges; his son Barnaby is about Ana’s age and, because of this, the two are to be trained together for their Bacchanalian Exams, given when they are fourteen. Mr. Pound is to do this; he has trained generations upon generations of members of the two families. However, there’s something odd about Mr. Pound and his training – his ulterior motive, to find the Os Divinitas (bone of the gods, and I mean that in a non-euphemistic sense), has become more imminent. Are Ana and Barnaby involved in some way? Ana’s best friend, Clarissa, who is mortal, has also been acting strangely recently. Barnaby, too, is not quite what he seems. And why is Ana’s father so conspicuously absent?

There’s some very interesting world-building in this book, and not just on Earth. It’s a strange mix of medieval technology and magic – magic used to explore other planets. At least some portion of the book is an environmental commentary, but from what I can tell, the author did not intend that to be the focus. There’s also a high level of philosophy in the book, mostly centered on divisions – divisions between mortals and immortals, between gods and humans, between humans and animals, between humans and their environment. Those who straddle those divisions (such as Ana, a quarter mortal) are important to Abouzeid’s ideas as well as the plot.

The characters are sometimes a little flat, as if the story is an allegory. They’re not quite flat enough to make it a true allegory, though, and they do grow and change. Ana, however, just isn’t that interesting. Barnaby is a better choice for a protagonist, in terms of being an engaging character. He has a talking dog that is probably the most interesting character in the whole book, and most of the humor in the book is centered around him. Ana’s friend Clarissa is sometimes amusing, but for the majority of the book she’s too driven and idealistic to make a proper foil to Ana. Barnaby fills that role and, obviously, if one doesn’t find Ana quite appealing, Barnaby will be.

The book is packaged for middle-grade readers, and the characters are thirteen years old, but in some ways the book might be a tad too sophisticated for a younger reader. I’d say more like 12-16-year-olds, rather than 10-14, for this one. Older readers won’t be bored, if they’re looking for something with a bit more depth than your average middle-grade fantasy. I’ll give it 4/5 stars.