Memorable heroes and daunting villains headline this fantasy series’ thrilling sophomore installment.
A royal family rallies against formidable creatures threatening their kingdom’s farmsteads in Creith’s YA fantasy, one in a series.
Princess Kiar is already worried about the kingdom of Valenia’s upcoming winter as wildlife eats or tramples the realm’s crops. She’s further unnerved when her grandmother forwards a vague warning (“the past has come back”). This may be a reference to the kingdom’s bog, which is seemingly getting bigger and overtaking the pasture. Kiar feels a presence out in that bog, as if something is watching her and her loved ones, including her foster brother and romantic interest Tuan. Indeed, locals describe raiders resembling walking trees with an eerie “stiff-jointed” style of mobility invading their farmsteads, apparently after the livestock. These monstrous “bog-walkers” are difficult to take down, which Kiar and her family quickly learn during a confrontation that leaves King Tir seriously injured. Valenians aren’t the only ones under threat of the expanding bog; someone from northern enemy territory of Noermark asks for Kiar’s help. The princess desperately searches for background about the bog-walkers—where they’re from and why they seem particularly afraid of her. Nods to the first installment in the series, The Swan Harp (2024), are clearly and concisely woven into Kiar’s first-person narration, though a few relatively minor characters pop up with no reminders of their pre-existing relationships. Kiar and her family are a well-rounded bunch, most of them “swanfolk” with an ability to shift between swan and human forms. They find themselves in exhilarating battle scenes that require combat skills and shrewdness as well as magic. The bog-walkers are exceedingly creepy, even after the story illuminates their mysterious origin. A rousing first half is followed by a somewhat less-exciting second half and a noticeably prolonged final act. Nonetheless, the closing pages offer surprises and plenty of reasons to stick around for the upcoming finale.
Memorable heroes and daunting villains headline this fantasy series’ thrilling sophomore installment.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2024
ISBN: 9798990803022
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Type Eighteen Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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