Wistful and intriguing, this tale dips its toes in horror but feels like a dream more than a nightmare.
A debut YA mystery weaves together threads of family and ghosts.
Ben Wolf has always been special, possessing empathic and clairvoyant abilities. Innate knowledge of the emotions of people around him as well as the locations of lost items and the facts of events he hasn’t seen has helped him out plenty in the past. But this talent has been hidden from everyone but his mother, as many might see it as freakish or frightening. The story is told from Ben’s point of view, and his matter-of-fact voice carries the early exposition and sets up the story effectively. As the narrative tension grows, readers also get a strong sense of his emotions as well as a feeling of immediacy that drives home some of the stranger happenings. Secrecy has allowed Ben to help people avoid disasters more than once, but secrets can also be dangerous or even deadly. When Ben’s distant Aunt Claire dies and leaves him and his mom a house in rural Windward Cove, California, their simple life is uprooted in more ways than one. At first, Ben is mostly concerned about starting high school in a new town, and he has little interest in his family ties to Windward Cove’s founding. But strange things soon start happening: cold spots, sudden feelings of depression and emptiness, odd laughter or strange voices. Ben needs every bit of his gift to find out why, and fast. Because, worst of all, his happy, outgoing, creative mom seems to be drawn to these haunting occurrences even more than he is, and the more time passes, the more they seem to take from her, until her very life is in jeopardy. Investigating the history of a place is a familiar trope for horror fans, but Ben’s powers and his family’s connection to the town put a novel spin on this idea and raise the emotional stakes. With solid, action-focused prose to drive Lafferty’s story forward, the pages keep turning and the mystery continues to unfold, offering readers of all ages a genuinely engrossing yarn.
Wistful and intriguing, this tale dips its toes in horror but feels like a dream more than a nightmare.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5439-5125-7
Page Count: 466
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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