Review by Frank Plowright

Meesh is a young demon who lives with her grandmother, and that she’s a more sensitive soul than most other demons is shown by her delight at finding a flower in Mount Magma, where the lava flows freely. The other joy in her life is the televised adventures of Princess Nouna from Plumeria City. Her good nature means she doesn’t fit in at school, where she’s bullied, but as is often the way in children’s stories, when it comes to saving the entire community, it’s the outsider’s determination that gets the job done.

The threat is lava behaving uncharacteristically and enveloping people, but Meesh manages to get away, thinking her best hope of help is contacting Princess Nouna. Actually, it is, but there are plenty of misunderstandings to figure out along the way, during which they discover two other allies and learn what’s happened. Meesh, by the way, isn’t bad in the sense of being naughty or evil, but in the sense of being poor at what’s expected from a demon.

Michelle Lam works best when sorting out the problems between Meesh and Nouna and detailing their budding friendship. However, there’s very little else that’s remotely captivating in the really simple art and over-extended story during which so much is random and so little departs from fantasy conventions. Furthermore founding publisher Geoffrey Faber, a man who prided himself on his imprint’s literary qualities is undoubtedly fuming in his grave at several variations of the grammatically incorrect phrase “those kids just don’t have as big of an imagination”. He’d have Lam behind after class making her write out “as big an imagination” a hundred times.

Lack of quality notwithstanding, Meesh seems to have struck a chord with young readers and The Secret of the Fang follows.