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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In Rich Meyrick’s The Prisoner of Venice, Ernest, a young Ratses living secretly inside the Tower of London, disappears, following a letter that promises him a mission in Venice. His friend Jaspa travels across Europe with a group of fellow Ses, tiny animal-like people who live hidden among humans, to bring him home. Their search leads them through Venice’s canals, gondola stations, and crowded squares where frightened local Ses speak in whispers about the Vanishings, a growing number of unexplained disappearances spreading through the city. While Jaspa uncovers signs that an organization called the Scuola Grande may have the missing Ses, Ernest is trapped inside hidden prison cells beneath the Doge’s Palace. With help from two Venetians who no longer trust the Scuola, Ernest begins planning an escape before more Ses vanish from Venice forever.
Rich Meyrick’s The Prisoner of Venice succeeds because fantasy works best when the invented world is inseparable from the real one surrounding it. Venice is not decorative here. Its canals, flooded prison cells, crowded waterbuses, and stone passageways shape every decision the characters make. Meyrick gives the city a physical presence, especially beneath the Doge’s Palace, where Ernest develops a cautious trust in Fioree, a Foxses guard slowly losing faith in the secretive Scuola organisation she serves. The novel also has its emotional moments. Jaspa’s desperate leap into the Grand Canal after his younger brother Bisckits falls from a storm-struck vaporetto has genuine urgency because Meyrick grounds the danger in recognizable fear. Albertee’s search for his missing family through fragments of Venetian folklore gives the story additional weight. Youth, teen readers, and the young at heart, drawn toward fantasy linked closely to European history, will appreciate the novel’s atmosphere, setting, and attention to character.
