Somewhere/Not/Here: The Realm of the Goblin Queen (Book 1) With Full Color Illustrations   Join the Goblin Queen on her quest for Somewhere/Not/Here   as she searches for the place she belongs. Visit the Road to Ruin, a strange witchy woman who reads from her book of M-Tales. Meet Shockappeal the punk faerie, hang with Halloween Jack, and fly with the Techno-Witch -  but avoid buying one of her moody brooms. Travel to the lands of Love and Unlove - nice places to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. Have a therapy session with the Magick Mirror. No appointment required. By the way, Truth has teeth and it will use them... bring band-aids. This trippy debut blurs the lines between reality and illusion, as a young goblin girl, affectionately known as the Goblin Queen—the same pseudonym used by the author—sets out on a quest to find her true home: "somewhere/not/here." Feeling rejected by her human foster family, especially after the birth of their son, Goblin Queen is determined to uncover her origins, where she belongs, and who she is in the process. With the aid of a few eccentric friends, including Halloween Jack (credited as the book's illustrator) and punk-faerie Shockappeal, Goblin Queen paints her adventures in liquid, poetic prose that drips across the pages. Blending metaphorical story-telling and biographical narrative, Somewhere/Not/Here engrosses with coming-of-age angst, building on themes of friendship, love, and identity, as Goblin Queen searches for both Wisdom and Truth. ("We all felt we were running a bit short of it lately" she writes.) The characters are larger-than-life, with a Techno-Witch who sells "moody brooms" and spells, a punk-faerie sporting a heart that's "cracked down the middle," and a host of reformed well-knowns from beloved fairy tales, including a Wolf who takes a side trip to New York City with Goblin Queen—and tempers his people-eating tendencies with the big city restaurant scene. Rife with complexity, play, and a sense of poetry, Somewhere/Not/Here drapes heavy themes with fantastical hoodwinkery, as the Goblin Queen references her "all-chemicals," those "real magic potions - wondrous, dark, and delightful" that guide her "along the edge of reason" and flits through musings on why "Reality is turning out... to be not quite so boring a creature as I had thought." What starts as a search for acceptance and love transforms into a deep understanding of the person reflected back in the "Magick Mirror," an enchantment that is more therapist than looking glass. Readers up for the ride will be spellbound by this twisty, witty, and, above all, vulnerable fantasy. Takeaway: A trippy, spellbinding quest for belonging and self-acceptance. BookLife Review Kirkus Reviews Awards and Accolades: Our verdict: GET IT A collection of prose, poetry, letters, scripts, and illustrations recounts the eclectic ramblings of a goblin girl and her otherworldly group of friends. "A goblin girl am I...I wandered into this world from Somewhere/not/here." From the opening lines of this book, credited to the Goblin Queen, readers delve into a moody, dreamy world from which a character, also named the Goblin Queen, narrates her innermost feelings. She launches into various "M-tales" ("the misadventures, the mistakes, the misery, the misdeeds, the melancholy, the macabre, the mundane, the misdemeanors, the murderous") and navigates relationships with an equally outcast group of friends. These include the punk-faerie Shockappeal; the Alice in Wonderland-themed Cheshire Cat (who now wants to be called "Dark Vade Cat," in a tongue-in-cheek Star Wars reference); the cryptic and occasionally obtuse Halloween Jack (who's also credited as the book's illustrator); and Techno-Witch, who eventually joins the ragtag bunch on a search for "Wisdom." The format begins with prose, but eventually makes its way to poetry, a full screenplay written by Shockappeal, letters, and even song lyrics to a musical by the Goblin Queen. Some pages contain only a few words, others are blank with minimal black-and-white sketches around the edges, and still others feature full-color illustrations with eerie images, such as a profile of a girl surrounded by flames and psychedelic-looking mushrooms. The book's symbolism isn't exactly subtle; Goblin's feelings of otherness and of emotional alienation from her "care/less" human parents could describe most teenagers. However, the book's self-awareness ("Okay, I'm not cynical anymore. / It was just a phase") and pure imagination effectively fuel an almost dreamlike descent into the vacillating emotions of youth. Even over-the-top moments contain moving truths: "My silver braces smiled jagged smiles at the world, at the humans. The truth was in the jaggedness, not the smile." Although there's very little plot, Goblin's emotional exploration offers an ongoing, enjoyable journey of its own. A unique set of musings that read like witty, dramatic diary entries from an