Fantasy fans will likely enjoy Anya’s adventures, which feature novel supernatural elements in a modern setting.
Finnish-Australian author Kuivalainen offers a debut urban fantasy about a young girl battling dark forces.
After wolves shockingly attack Anya’s grandfather in the middle of summer, she sits grieving in a local café. She lives in a village bordering Russia and Karelia that’s “so small that it didn’t even have an official name,” so she’s naturally surprised when a stranger greets her in English; she’s doubly shocked when he introduces himself as Tuoni, the ruler of the Underworld. He explains to Anya that her grandfather was a shaman with great powers, and that she also has magical ability that “needs to be utilised, or it will not only be a disaster for you but for your whole world.” It turns out that there’s a gate between Earth and the Otherworld, which just so happens to border Anya’s farm. Anya becomes aware that the wolves that killed her grandfather were no ordinary predators, and she knows that her task ahead will be a formidable one. As she confronts evil forces, she’s aided by Yvan, an ancient prince who can transform into a firebird and other supernatural beings that Anya thought only existed in fairy tales. Several characters enjoy drinking alcohol, including Anya, who at one point wants “vodka, anything alcoholic, to calm her scattered nerves.” The book’s dialogue can be both obvious and clunky, as when a character states, “I can’t make you stay but it’s going to be a shit fight and I would feel better having you fighting at my side.” However, the story incorporates a fair share of surprises, and never fails to provide new scenes featuring bloodshed and strange new creatures (“It flopped, bloody as a newborn onto the ground and stretched its wings. It started to cry and grew to the size of a horse”). The beasts, in particular, help this story to move beyond the genre’s many clichés, and their complexity extends well beyond typical fantasy creatures.
Fantasy fans will likely enjoy Anya’s adventures, which feature novel supernatural elements in a modern setting.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1503093881
Page Count: 518
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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