An enjoyable, violent novel that delivers a strong-willed heroine and a brooding hero.
A determined teenager confronts a dystopian world and an unwanted destiny in this YA fantasy series opener.
Leonie, an Australian girl who attends community college, eats cold pizza for breakfast, and talks back to her father, struggles to get by. A few years ago, a tragedy stole her will to smile, and now she keeps a routine, just waiting to be a part of something bigger. When she feels “intense heat” blazing in her chest one day, she’s at first terrified, then disbelieving, until finally she starts to understand that she’s one of the Chosen, magical people of another realm. To them, she’s a Pulsar, the first of a group of warriors and protectors to be born after the rest were massacred 200 years ago. She travels to the new world to learn how to tame her gift—and to be granted a shield, a guardian creature she is assured possesses no will of its own. But this kytaen, Korren, turns out to be a person in his own right who has no desire to be subjugated by the Chosen. When rebels against the Chosen government come to claim Leonie’s abilities for their own cause, her decision to treat Korren as a friend gives him the power and will to defend her. In her debut book, Simlett, who lives in Australia, creates a realm that is full of wonder by day but terror by night and populates it with the type of political unrest that teenagers who love dystopian fantasies should gravitate toward. Leonie is a prickly narrator, at once sympathetic and suffering; she alternates between sarcasm and an optimistic wisdom that leaves others inspired. Korren, as a counterpoint narrator, allows readers to see just how much has deteriorated in the world of the Chosen while also providing a look at Leonie that shows her as tougher than she believes herself to be. This solid first volume registers a high death toll, and by the end, the protagonists seem to be facing even more complications—and dangers. This should be a surefire hit for fans of Marie Lu’s Legend and Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha trilogies.
An enjoyable, violent novel that delivers a strong-willed heroine and a brooding hero.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 363
Publisher: WWS Publishing Ltd
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Intriguing but convoluted and underdeveloped.
When the veil between life and death is torn, threatening everything and everyone she loves, Célie is determined to take “till death do us part” as a challenge, her role as Bride of Death notwithstanding, in this sequel to The Scarlet Veil (2023).
Célie’s life has very abruptly gone to hell in a handbasket. She’s been turned into a vampire and abandoned by the mysterious and infuriatingly alluring man who turned her. Fearful of hurting her friends, she can’t eat or sleep, and she loathes herself and what she’s become. Célie is also being haunted by her late sister, Filippa. The dead are walking, something is going wrong with magic, and Death himself has manifested in corporeal form to claim his due. Only Célie can mend what’s been broken—but at what cost? This sequel picks up without much time spent reorienting readers to plot points or character dynamics. As in the first book, the drama spools on for too long, only properly picking up momentum about two-thirds of the way through the book. What starts as a slow-burn romance soon becomes quite the opposite, and although the stakes are generally higher than before and there are some very touching moments, the narrative never quite comes together in a satisfying way, and the worldbuilding and characters feel shallow and lack sufficient context. Most characters are light-skinned.
Intriguing but convoluted and underdeveloped. (Paranormal. 16-18)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780063258808
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
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