A fun, inventive superhero tale with a brave teenage girl at its heart.
This second book in the teen paranormal Legacy of Sadie Mae Stevens series introduces a new and dangerous foe for the crimson-tressed title character.
In the first installment (The Gordite Witch, 2012), Sadie Mae, a South Carolina teen with “pecan-brown skin and fiery red hair that for the life of her will not dye,” discovered her mother’s death when she was a child was actually the result of an interdimensional fight with a zombie sorceress known as the Gordite Witch. Christine Stevens wasn’t human but a Daughter of the Seas from the underwater planet Dylan. Like her mother, Sadie Mae possesses supercharged blood that allows her to produce toxic vapor from her hands and eyes that will crystallize into chains to bind the enemies of the Dylanians—the Tetradyne Rulers and their servants, the Pigwallers—and protect humans as well. She also has access to a magical forest all her own, where she’s mentored by a violet-eyed mountain named Lendra and trained by a human/frog hybrid called Norris. After avenging her mother’s death, Sadie Mae ignores a summons from Lendra about the imminent threat of Torene the Tornado in favor of hanging out with her part-Dylanian friends Jalind, Printa, and Harrah and foster parents Suzanna and Dr. Heathcliff Brimm. When Torene appears in Sadie Mae’s forest and kidnaps Norris, the heroine realizes she’s neglected her duties and put her family and friends in danger. As if that’s not enough, there’s a cute new boy named Lander Vandersal in school, and he won’t stop staring at Sadie. Miller (Promises Unbroken, 2015, etc.) delivers sentences that are often lacking in rhythm—“At best she hoped his hype would not end up turning into a weak distraction.” But the author’s imagination remains rich, with the denizens of Sadie Mae’s mystical forest far from the fantasy clichés of elves and dragons (they include graceful “baby dinosaur-sized” green creatures that look like turtles and turn out to be Siamese twins). Sadie Mae is a relatable protagonist who messes up mightily and must deal with the consequences of her actions. Ultimately, she’ll have to make an ethical decision that will challenge everything she’s learned.
A fun, inventive superhero tale with a brave teenage girl at its heart.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
