The New York Times Book Review
Self-conscious about your body? Unsure where—or if—you'll ever fit in? Wondering when people will start treating you like an adult? Katherine Marsh's Jepp, Who Defied the Stars delves into these perennial adolescent challenges while transporting her readers to a tiny island in Denmark in the late 16th century…Jepp does, as the title of Marsh's novel announces, defy what another less gifted and determined young man might accept as fate, just as Marsh transcends genre to create an engaging narrative complex enough to keep not-so-young adults turning its pages.
—Kathryn Harrison
Publishers Weekly
In the final years of the 16th century, a 15-year-old dwarf named Jepp struggles to understand himself and his place in the world; he’s caught between the pull of the past, the promise of the future, and the forces of fate and free will. The first of the book’s three sections finds a battered and beaten Jepp being transported ignobly in a cage to an unknown destination; along the way, he recalls the events that led him there, from his humble upbringing in an inn to becoming a court dwarf in Brussels (a role in which humiliation, opportunity, and danger are closely entwined). Jepp’s fortunes continue to wax and wane in the later sections, as he arrives at the island castle of astronomer Tycho Brahe. As in Marsh’s The Night Tourist and The Twilight Prisoner, real history is effortlessly woven into her fiction: while Jepp has his roots in an actual dwarf who served Brahe, Marsh transforms his “footnote” of a story into an epic search for love, family, respect, and a destiny of one’s own making. Ages 12–up. Agent: Alex Glass, Trident Media Group. (Oct.)
NOVEMBER 2012 - AudioFile
Jepp, a dwarf, was taken from his home in Astraveld and brought to Coudenberg Palace, where he became an amusement for the Spanish Infanta. Is this humiliating fate written in the stars, or can he shape his own destiny? Set in the late sixteenth century, the story brings to life the dawn of the age of scientific thought and exploration. Paul Michael Garcia is superb as he uses subtle touches to give each character a unique flavor. His voice for the well-known astronomer Tycho Brahe is especially skillful. Katherine Marsh has written a fascinating story, and Garcia’s performance is icing on the cake. One wishes the print version’s Author’s Note, which provides historical context, and a conversation with the author had been included in the audio. N.E.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Part coming-of-age novel and part paternity quest, this late-16th-century tale earns its distinction by virtue of its narrator: a dwarf. Edgar Award–winning author Marsh (The Twilight Prisoner, 2009, etc.) has written a fast-paced adventure, abundant with period details, that comprises about two years of the diminutive Jepp's life. Jepp's account begins at a perilous point in his story--"imprisoned in [a] star-crossed coach, bumping up and down bone-rattling roads"--which leads to an exposition of the events that have brought him to this fate. Eventually his tale moves to a time beyond the hazardous coach journey and on to a satisfying, if overly contrived, ending. The book has three parts, loosely linked to three crucial northern European settings: the rural inn where Jepp was raised by a loving mother; the kingdom of Coudenberg, where he endures the luxurious but humiliating life of a court dwarf and is involved in a horrible tragedy; and the palace of Uraniborg, renowned for astronomical research, where Jepp's status rises almost miraculously from pet dog to that of a respected scholar as well as a favored suitor for his beloved. Despite the fact that the third part of the book pales in comparison to the first two, the honest and humorously self-deprecating voice of Jepp moves readers to rejoice with him as he seeks and manipulates his destiny. (Historical fiction. 12-18)
