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I don't know if John Wright's intent for Orphans of Chaos was to write a Harry Potter for grownups. But that's what he's accomplished. (By the way, I'm not knocking the Potter phenomenon by saying this; there's something to be said for wrapping all the clichés of the fantasy, boy detective and coming of age genres into a highly readable series keyed to the abrupt stages of adolescent maturity. However, and not that there is necessarily anything wrong with this, the Potter series works only within the young adult form.) Even though the plot features standard YA elements such as a group of ostensible adolescents at a fantastical boarding school, be warned this is definitely not one for the pre-teen set. Indeed, it may not be suitable for some older teens. Not just because of the mild eroticism, including an S/M scene in which our lovely narrator is placed in chains and dressed as a harlot by her captors to tap the powers of the school's dirty old man of a caretaker. But because most of the clever repartee among the chief characters -- which includes dense expositions of molecular physics as well as references to the fine points of Greek mythology, pagan and Christian belief systems and the classical philosophical discussions that so fascinate scholars of antiquity -- will go over their heads. (Truth be told, sometimes it goes over mine.) Indeed, if you're familiar with any of Wright's previous works, either the science fiction Golden Age trilogy or the War of the Dreaming fantasy duology, you come to expect a level of erudition that serves to remind you of the considerable gaps in your own evidently inferior liberal arts education.

Five seeming children (the titular orphans) attend a British boarding school where just about everything is not as it appears on the surface -- not the least of which is that each orphan possesses a singular supernatural ability. While every kid in school probably has felt imprisoned, the orphans literally are so, and there is considerable uncertainty in whose interests their schoolmasters/captors operate. In that sense, we're in familiar YA territory -- the alien adult world with its peculiar rituals and behaviors revealed amidst the awkward frustrations of onsetting physical and emotional maturity. However, no one outside of maybe Stephen Hawking, when he was 15, talks like the seeming teenaged narrator Amelia:

"Imagine every object as a worm, or an umbrella, drawing a line through time. The one line toward the direction of less entropy we call 'past,' and its position is determined within the limits of quantum uncertainty. The multiple lines towards the direction of greater-entropy we call 'future,' and their locations, to simultaneous observers, occupy the set of all possible locations to which the object could move in a given time. Put two gravitating bodies near each other and their sets of possible motion lines bend towards each other. The line defined by the least energy expended is inert motion, or free fall. The free-fall line, which would otherwise be straight, is distorted by a gravitating body so that it curves in a conic section. Got it?"

David Soyka is a former journalist and college teacher who writes the occasional short story and freelance article. He makes a living writing corporate marketing communications, which is a kind of fiction without the art.