A compelling story that will leave readers anticipating the sequel.
A girl surviving as a street thief is swept into a power struggle of secrets and dark mages in this fantasy adventure.
Living alone on the island of Karolene ever since the death of her father and the disappearance of her mother, 15-year-old Hitomi does what she can to survive by working and stealing. Though she tries her best to blend in, Hitomi, with her “sand-gold skin” and distinctive eye shape, does not resemble the local islanders, although they are diverse in appearance themselves. More dangerously, she is a Promise—her parents secretly trained her to use magic. As the nefarious Arch Mage Blackflame targets his rivals in Karolene, Hitomi assists the resistance group known as the Shadow League in their efforts against him. The Shadow League attempts to smuggle Lord Degath and his family to safety before Blackflame can arrest the nobleman for political opposition, but the plan fails, and Hitomi and others are captured. Faced with certain death, she must rely on her magic to escape. While the worldbuilding will leave readers wanting more, the action picks up quickly, and each part of Hitomi’s journey brings surprises. In this rewritten version of a previously self-published novel, Khanani weaves a fresh story with a protagonist who is easy to root for.
A compelling story that will leave readers anticipating the sequel. (name pronunciation guide) (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781958051252
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Snowy Wings Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce.
Houck kicks off a new story arc in the world of the Tiger’s Curse series with new tigers who live in a northerly setting.
The death of their widowed royal mother touches off a crisis in the Kievian Empire; neither Stacia nor Verusha Stepanov, 17-year-old sword-wielding twin sisters, wants to be named tsarina. But questions of succession get put on hold when a battle with a sorcerer inexplicably turns the two into nonspeaking Siberian tigers. Hints of a cure send them, along with a growing entourage of men to provide assistance (and, perforce, do all the talking), on a long trek. Though most of the cast sticks to genre type, Houck throws in a wild card in the form of hunky, inarticulate Nikolai, who joins the quest because he is enthralled by Verusha—and who also killed his whole family in an act of revenge. Occasional anachronistic dialogue (e.g., “Are you ready, ladies?”) disrupts the tale’s generally earnest tone, as do the clumsy attempts at banter. A third tiger, snarky and blind but conveniently able to see through others’ eyes, trots in late in the story. The events in this setup volume unfold with many a flashback and change in point of view and head toward no sort of resolution—only the cave-dwelling White Shaman of the Tundra’s advice that further journeys are in the offing. The central cast in this Russian-inspired fantasy world presents white; the Indigenous population includes nomadic reindeer herders.
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce. (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798212221696
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale.
A reissue of the 2016 novel published as Consider.
Alexandra Lucas and her boyfriend, Dominick, are about to start their senior year of high school when 500 vertexes—each one a doorway-shaped “hole into the fabric of the universe”—appear across the world, accompanied by holographic messages communicating news of Earth’s impending doom. The only escape is a one-way trip through the portals to a parallel future Earth. As people leave through the vertexes and the extinction event draws nearer, the world becomes increasingly unfamiliar. A lot has changed in the past several years, including expectations of mental health depictions in young adult literature; Alex’s struggle with anxiety and reliance on Ativan, which she calls her “little white savior” while initially discounting therapy as an intervention, make for a trite after-school special–level treatment of a complex situation; a short stint of effective therapy does finally occur but is so limited in duration that it contributes to the oversimplification of the topic. Alex also has unresolved issues with her Gulf War veteran father (who possibly grapples with PTSD). The slow pace of the plot as it depicts a crumbling society, along with stilted writing and insubstantial secondary characterization, limits the appeal of such a small-scale, personal story. Characters are minimally described and largely racially ambiguous; Alex has golden skin and curly brown hair.
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale. (Science fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-72826-839-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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