Dynamic characters choose sides on the battlefield and in their hearts, aptly setting the stage for the next book.
In this second installment of a YA fantasy series, a half faerie must decide whether incarnating a wicked entity will stop a fiendish princess from seizing the throne in the Realm of Faerie.
Now that Gray-Faerie regent Elendah is dead, war between the Dark and Light in the enchanted world is imminent. Princess Lilliane convinces Queen Luisa that the Albiana lineage is a threat to the throne—specifically, half mortals like Melia. The genuine threat is Umbra, a bodiless being in need of a willing vessel and who’s already failed in swaying Melia. Her sisters and cousin Gabriela, however, may be in danger, so Melia traverses the mortal world to warn them. Flora, the last of the spring faeries, later makes a startling proposition—Melia should voluntarily incarnate Umbra. If the half faerie can learn to control Umbra, she’ll be a formidable opponent to Lilliane, who’s garnered power as a practitioner of black magic. Melia doesn’t get much encouragement from maybe love interest and priest Ryder, worried that the entity will kill her. But she also has competition for the role of vessel, ranging from dragonwitch Sevondi to young Jade, Gabriela’s granddaughter, whom Umbra seems to target. Interested parties may need to steal a magical sword and basin for the incarnation, while Melia will have to elude an assassin Lilliane sends after Jade. Despite teasing a Dark/Light confrontation, this sequel to Half Faerie (2014) is really a struggle over who will embody Umbra. Both Sevondi and Jade fight for the opportunity, the latter believing Umbra’s chosen her and who further sparks a delightful romantic entanglement by adhering herself to Ryder. Dialogue-laden scenes have surprising momentum, with characters generally discussing strategy, and Umbra telepathically relaying to Flora his intention to destroy the Whole (all known worlds). Mortal-world inhabitant Jade’s cynical self-awareness, meanwhile, adds humor. Anticipating her rescue when captured, she muses: “Isn’t that what happened in the enchanted world? Damsels in distress and all.” A climactic war in Faerie is saved for a subsequent volume, but Garrett (Isolt’s Enchantment, 2015, etc.) wraps up this entry satisfactorily, with a bloody skirmish, some deaths, and a reunited family.
Dynamic characters choose sides on the battlefield and in their hearts, aptly setting the stage for the next book.Pub Date: July 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9907691-3-2
Page Count: 538
Publisher: Half-Faerie Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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