THE GUARDIAN

A YA fantasy epic follows a teenager destined to challenge the religion and status quo of her world.

“I hate being a prophet,” 14-year-old Iliya Rusul tells her spiritual “guardian” when she feels frustrated that he won’t give her all the information she needs. Iliya lives in a remote village and struggles to care for her disturbed mother and her siblings; work and medicine are hard to come by. Since her 13th birthday, an otherworldly being—known only as her guardian—has followed Iliya, giving her guidance and breadcrumbs of information about her role as a prophet who will affect the world. When Iliya learns that she can perform miracles of healing and diagnosing illnesses, she strives to help her neighbors. But each miracle comes at a steep price: Time is taken away from Iliya’s life. Determined to help those in need without losing herself, Iliya sets off from the village to discover the wider world. She meets new friends like Reth and Alisha, who explain how society has been divided into epicenters run by powerful, corrupt corporations. These epicenters create isolated villages like the one Iliya was born in. With her friends’ help and her guardian’s wisdom, Iliya realizes that the biggest miracle of all would be to equalize the world and redistribute all wealth, but like anything else, the cost of such a dangerous and complex endeavor may be too great a price to pay. In the same vein as Philip Pullman’s classic His Dark Materials series, Tracy’s novel puts likable, plucky heroes into both exciting action sequences and complicated inner debates about philosophy and religion. The added layer of economics with evil, all-powerful corporations and transactional miracles feels fresh. It’s a smart twist that brings Iliya’s adventures into conversations with the contemporary world. But younger readers may find themselves just as frustrated as the book’s hero, as Tracy does struggle to properly explain and build up such a complicated universe. Iliya’s long story takes its time introducing readers to how guardians, gods, cities, social classes, and technologies work. The exposition is heavy-handed and arrives curiously late, making for a rough start to such a long journey. Still, answers eventually come, and patient readers will be richly rewarded.

A fantasy that’s brimming with clever ideas and a dense mythology.