Ronan Boyle, the ungainly 15-year-old detective of the Garda Special Unit of Tir Na Nog, is still on his search for the Bog Man. He still wonders why he, a lowly recruit, was chosen for this mission into the fairy underground. Yet here he is, along with his sidekicks: Figs (a shape-shifter), Rí (a wolfhound), and Log (Ronan's partner, a human raised by leprechauns). Are they ready to tangle with mythical creatures such as leprechauns, far darrigs, unicorns, wee folk, and fairies? As book one (Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles, 2019) ended, Police Captain De Valera and wolfhound Lily had been captured. Ronan's goal now is to find them alive and rescue them. Additionally, he remains concerned for his jailed (and likely framed) parents' safety and longs to learn about their current situation. Lennon continues to write with cheeky humor and "informational" footnotes, weaving clumsy faux pas with fantasy adventures. His enchanting descriptions of Tir Na Nog and its inhabitants will easily have readers suspending their disbelief and watching for book three.

Following Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles (2019), the further zany adventures of an anxiety-prone 15-year-old member of the Garda Special Unit of Tir Na Nog, i.e., Irish faerie fighter.Despite his incompetence, anxiety, and absolute lack of courage, young Ronan Boyle is off again to the enchanted side of Ireland, to capture Lord Desmond Dooley, the man who framed Boyle's parents for theft of an ancient mummy, the Bog Man, and to rescue his captain, who fell into Dooley's nefarious hands. Accompanied by the formidable Log MacDougall, a human raised by leprechauns, and an Irish wolfhound named Rí, he braves a wild variety of horrors, including a unicorn spa town, where he appears in a musical revue, and the titular Swamp of Certain Death. As in the first volume, the tale is snort-out-loud funny on the sentence level, but the plot, such as there is one, approximates the inside of Ronan's noggin: "a hamster on a Mobius strip, running frantic laps to nowhere." It's highly enjoyable to a point, and then the utter lack of cause and effect begins to wear readers down. One could skip any or all of 90% of the scenes in this book and never notice. As far as race goes, the unicorns come in all colors; Ronan is depicted as white on the cover.Equal parts funny and fatiguing. (Fantasy. 8-14)