Reception
In a starred review, School Library Journal described the book as "not just a rip-roaring adventure ... but also a warm and satisfying tale about friendship." Kirkus Reviews was less positive, saying that the book "may wear down less patient readers", citing the prose and needless elaborations in several areas. Horn Book Magazine disagreed, saying that "Stewart keeps interest high throughout". They especially praised the "first-rate brainteasers", with School Library Journal also commenting that it had "plenty of clever twists".
The beginning of the novel came in for particular criticism, with Horn Book Magazine complaining of "a few treacly initial scenes" and School Library Journal saying that "he action takes a while to get going". However, comparing it overall to its predecessor, Horn Book Magazine felt that it was "a worthy successor" - although Kirkus Reviews said that it "has more of an air of trading on the previous one's cleverness than building on it."
Read more about this topic: The Mysterious Benedict Society And The Perilous Journey
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)