The Kiki Strike series, by Kirsten Miller, is a series of three novels revolving around the adventures of six girls in Manhattan, and currently consists of three books (Inside the Shadow City, The Empress's Tomb and The Darkness Dwellers).
Told from Ananka Fishbein's point of view, these books describe the adventures of the Irregulars, a group of girls who join to explore an underground world beneath Manhattan called "The Shadow City." During this, they must fight against various villains and help save the city of New York numerous times.
Ananka attends a private school called Atalanta, and lives in a small apartment nearby that is crammed with books on every subject imaginable. Although she does not believe it, she is quite intelligent and very eccentric. She has brown hair, is described as chubby in Inside the Shadow City, and thinks of herself as very unattractive. Later in the book she is given a makeover by Betty, and finally sees herself as pretty.
When asked what she would like to be when she grows up, she says she would like to study Giant Squid. At the beginning of the series, she needs to be led by Kiki Strike, but by the end, she is a leader herself.
Ananka is not gifted in school (although very intelligent) because she finds school to be an utter waste of time. However, she learns much more important things, such as how to survive in dangerous situations and to look at things and see them as they were in the past. Her parents do not recognise her special talents and are instead very focused on how she does in school. Her grandfather was a rat lover and invented a way to safely and effectively get rid of them, The Reverse Pied Piper (a device which the Irregulars recreate and use throughout the series).
Ananka is the narrator of the series.
Kiki Strike
Kiki Strike is a small, albino girl who founds the Irregulars and is often considered the leader of the group. Although her platinum hair, a height of under five feet, and unhealthily pale complexion are off-putting, she is described as "strikingly beautiful" on many occasions. She's an excellent leader but sometimes can be cold and insensitive to the needs of the other irregulars. Her real name is 'Katarina Galatzina' but this was changed when she was poisoned by her jealous aunt Livia Galetzina, who wanted to take over the throne.[vague]
Kiki is always determined to help everybody who needs help. She is clever and knows multiple languages and martial arts. She also is reputed to have an extensive knowledge of weaponry from her caregiver, Verushka. Kiki's cousin, Princess Sidonia, is also her nemesis, as Sidonia's mother poisoned Kiki's whole family, in an attempt to take the Pokrovian throne. Sidonia is determined to kill Kiki, because if Kiki dies, she will be next in line for the Pokrovian throne. Kiki, in turn, wants to get Sidonia's pink diamond ring so that she can use the inscribed instructions to find directions to the proof that Sidonia's mother had killed her mother. Kiki has escaped to New York with her caregiver and friend Verushka Kozlova, whom she lives with. Due to the poison, unfortunately, Kiki is allergic to everything except cafe au lait and a special nutritious gruel that Veruksha prepares for her.
Luz Lopez
Luz Lopez is a gifted mechanic and inventor, and she is good friends with DeeDee Morlock. Although Luz is innocent, she has a criminal record which she is often worried about. She is very poor, and her family is said to have escaped from Cuba when she was a child. Because of this, Luz finds it difficult to trust other people and often lashes out when her shortcomings are pointed out.
DeeDee Morlock
DeeDee Morlock is an incredibly talented chemist, and she concocts every potion, poison, and perfume the Irregulars use during their adventures. Her parents are both scientists at Columbia University. She is very clumsy and very kind. She is the daughter of a chemistry professor. She gets in a bad accident during one of the Irregulars' adventures in The Shadow City.
She is first introduced at a Girl Scouts meeting, where she has just "succeeded in refining a particularly dangerous strain of botulism", which is described as a poison that can reverse wrinkles and all signs of age. She is the scientist of the group, and inventor of many clever concoctions, including several explosives; Morlock's Miracle Mixture, a self-made substance which repels poisons when digested; and Fille Fiable a concoction used to make one seem trustworthy.
DeeDee wears dreadlocks that often get singed or burnt off during her experiments. She receives a scar on her forehead from an explosion that takes place in Inside the Shadow City.
Betty Bent
The third Irregular to be introduced, Betty Bent is a master of disguise. Her parents are costume designers for the Metropolitan Opera, and Betty always appears in prosthetics, wigs, and costumes. She rarely shows her true face, even though she attends the Girl Scouts weekly. Betty is incredibly shy, sweet and forgiving, rarely clashing with the others' strong personalities. She is very brave. She also makes the costumes, disguises, and uniforms for the group.
When not in costume, Betty is described as a pretty, olive-skinned girl with a black bob haircut. Over the course of the series, she becomes good friends with Ananka Fishbien, and they go shopping together.
Oona Wong
The disgraced daughter of Lester Liu, the leader of the Fu Tsang gang, Oona is an expert hacker and forger. She forges birth certificates, driving licenses and illegal maps and is also known to have a talent for picking locks. She is a very elegant, Chinese, and is described as being very beautiful. She has her own nail studio, the Golden Lotus, which brings in much money. However, she makes even more, often partially illegal money from the salon because the rich clients believe that the salon girls do not understand English. This leads them to discuss important and often money-making deals and pieces of information with their friends, most of which Oona picks up and uses to help her get more money. Oona has a gruff voice that does not match her doll-like appearance, and she is known to be cruel or mean on some occasions.
Iris McLeod
Once an honorary member of the Irregulars, Iris has saved the lives of the main six several times. She is often picked on by Oona, as she is the youngest and smallest of the Irregulars. She is first really introduced at the age eleven, but first appears in the series a seven-year-old. Iris is first mentioned in the series in the first book, as she encounters the Irregulars as they are escaping from the Shadow City. In later books, she becomes an official member. She often assisted DeeDee during experiments and has developed a perfume that makes other people trust the wearer. Her parents travel a lot, and they once brought back a very strong smelling perfume that turns out to keep the rats of the shadow city at bay.
Related Research Articles
Poison Ivy is a character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Robert Kanigher and artist Carmine Infantino, she debuted in Batman #181 and has become one of the superhero Batman's most enduring enemies belonging to the collective of adversaries that make up his rogues gallery.
Cheryl Marjorie Blossom is a fictional character of the Archie Comics universe. She is a wealthy and powerful teenage girl, the privileged daughter of a businessman. She is portrayed by Madelaine Petsch in Riverdale and Diya Gupta in The Archies.
Harley Quinn is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. She was created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm for Batman: The Animated Series as a henchwoman for the Joker, and debuted in its 22nd episode, "Joker's Favor", on September 11, 1992. While intended to appear in one episode, Quinn became a recurring character within the DC Animated Universe (DCAU) as the Joker's sidekick and love interest, and was adapted into DC Comics' canon seven years later, beginning with the one-shot Batman: Harley Quinn #1. Quinn's origin story features her as a former psychologist at Gotham City's Arkham Asylum who was manipulated by and fell in love with the Joker, her patient, eventually becoming his accomplice and lover. The character's alias is a play on the stock character Harlequin from the 16th-century Italian theater commedia dell'arte.
The Adventure Series by Enid Blyton, a prolific English children's author, is a series of eight children's novels. These books feature the same child characters: Philip, Jack, Dinah, and Lucy-Ann, along with several adult characters. Jack's pet parrot, Kiki, is also a standard feature in each novel.
Triplicate Girl is a superhero appearing in DC Comics, primarily as a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th and 31st centuries. She has also had the aliases Duo Damsel, Triad, Una, Duplicate Damsel and Duplicate Girl.
Kiki or Ki Ki may refer to:
Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels is an American animated mystery comedy series created by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears and produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for ABC. The series aired during the network's Saturday morning schedule from September 10, 1977, to June 21, 1980.
Pauline Matthews, better known by her stage name Kiki Dee, is an English pop singer. Known for her blue-eyed soul vocals, she was the first female singer from the UK to sign with Motown's Tamla Records.
Phantom Lady is a fictional superheroine appearing in media published by Quality Comics and DC Comics. She was created by the Eisner & Iger studio, one of the first to produce comics on demand for publishers. The character's early adventures were drawn by Arthur Peddy.
Deltora Quest 3 is a series of children's fantasy books, written by Australian author Emily Rodda. It follows the adventures of three companions, Lief, Barda, and Jasmine, as they journey across the magical land of Deltora to awaken the last seven dragons and destroy the Four Sisters. It comprises four books which were first published in Australia in 2004 and 2005 in the United States by Scholastic. The Dragons of Deltora series is preceded by two other series that take place in the same fictional world and feature the same characters and continues the story. These series are Deltora Quest and Deltora Quest 2. Collectively, these three series are known as the Deltora Quest series or the Deltora series.
Rose Nylund is a fictional character from the sitcom television series The Golden Girls and its spin-off, The Golden Palace. She was portrayed by Betty White for 8 years, totaling 204 episodes.
The Mummy's Curse is a 1944 American horror film directed by Leslie Goodwins. Produced by Universal Pictures, it is the fifth entry in Universal's original Mummy franchise, serving as a sequel to The Mummy's Ghost (1944). It marks Lon Chaney Jr.'s final appearance as Kharis, an Egyptian mummy.
Moral Disorder (ISBN 0-7475-8162-2) is a collection of connected short stories by Margaret Atwood. It was first published on 4 September 2006 by McClelland and Stewart. It chronicles the hidden pains of a troubled Canadian family over a 60-year span. All the short stories have the same female main character at different times of her life, except the last one, which is an autobiographical tale.
Kat Cressida is an American actress whose credits include voicing the character Dee Dee on the animated television series Dexter's Laboratory, as well as playing the Bride in The Haunted Mansion at the Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort. She also voiced Bloody Mary in the video game The Wolf Among Us.
The Match Factory Girl is a 1990 Finnish-Swedish film edited, written, co-produced, and directed by Aki Kaurismäki, the final installment of his Proletariat Trilogy, after his Shadows in Paradise and Ariel. It follows Iris, a young, plain-looking factory worker living a lonely, impoverished and uneventful life in late 1980s Finland. Iris is played by Kati Outinen, who had appeared in a number of other Kaurismäki films.
Kirsten Miller is an American novelist and the creator of the Kiki Strike book series. Her first book in the series, Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City, came out in 2006. Her second book in the series, The Empress's Tomb, came out in October 2007. The series chronicles the adventures of Kiki Strike, Ananka Fishbein and their friends in New York City. In 2001, the front lawn of a Manhattan nursing home collapsed to reveal an underground room, giving Kirsten the idea for the first book, set in the tunnels and rooms beneath the city. She created Kiki Strike and the Irregulars to explore these secret passageways.
The Empress's Tomb (2007) is a young adult novel by Kirsten Miller, the second in the Kiki Strike series.
Oona Castilla Chaplin is a Spanish-Swiss-British actress. Her roles include Talisa Maegyr in the HBO TV series Game of Thrones, Kitty Trevelyan in the BBC drama The Crimson Field, and Zilpha Geary in the series Taboo.
Majority Rules! is a Canadian teen comedy drama series which first aired on Teletoon in 2009. The series is also dubbed Votez Becky! for the French title.
Batwoman is a superheroine appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. She is the first DC character to bear the name "Batwoman". She was created by writer Edmond Hamilton and artist Sheldon Moldoff under the direction of editor Jack Schiff, as part of an ongoing effort to expand Batman's cast of supporting characters. Batwoman began appearing in DC Comics stories beginning with Detective Comics #233 (1956), in which she was introduced as a love interest for Batman in order to combat the allegations of Batman's homosexuality arising from the controversial book Seduction of the Innocent (1954). When Julius Schwartz became editor of the Batman-related comic in 1964, he removed non-essential characters including Kathy Kane, Bat-Girl, Bat-Mite, and Ace the Bat-Hound. Later, the 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths retroactively established that Batwoman's existence was on an Earth separate from DC's main continuity.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
