A fast-moving, engaging tale in what promises to be an epic fantasy romance series.
A superhuman teen heiress must survive first love and her twin sister’s homicidal ambitions in this novel.
Seventeen-year-old Chancery Alamecha is an evian, a member of a genetically pure race in which humans are a corrupted subset. Evians can live for up to a millennium. They are faster and stronger than humans and can heal themselves from all but the most severe injuries. Chancery’s mother is almost nine centuries old and is ruler of one of the six evian families, to which human leaders pay obeisance. Evian succession defaults to the youngest daughter—in the case of the Alamecha family, Chancery’s twin sister, Judica. Chancery and Judica look alike but have very different personalities. Whereas Chancery is compassionate, Judica is cold and cruel. While Chancery daydreams about living in the human world, Judica trains in single combat (the evian way of settling disputes) and remains consumed by hatred for her sister. The protagonist has no ambition, but when her mother is murdered, having just changed her heirship document to name Chancery, everything changes. More than ever, Judica wants Chancery dead. Chancery must face her in a duel to the death or live forever in exile. She has 10 days to decide. She chooses to spend this time in New York, training with Edam, Judica’s former bodyguard, for whom Chancery has more than a crush, and attending a human school, where she meets Noah Wen, the debonair youngest son of a Chinese magnate. Will Chancery return to face certain death at the hands of her sister? And who will win her heart, Edam or Noah? In this fantasy romance series opener, Baker (Finding Liberty, 2019, etc.) writes simply but effectively in the first person, present tense. The evian world is immediately compelling, emerging naturally from the story and offering some nice points of difference from the more standard fantasy fare of elves and vampires. Chancery is a relatable protagonist, and the other characters remain distinct without drawing too much from stock types. The genre mix is not without issue—for some, the romance and fantasy intrigue will make uneasy bedfellows—but nonetheless the story swiftly progresses, deftly playing to the escapism desired by YA and new-adult readers.
A fast-moving, engaging tale in what promises to be an epic fantasy romance series.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-949655-14-8
Page Count: 490
Publisher: Purple Puppy Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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