by Jennifer Ridge ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 7, 2019
An engaging series installment that points fantasy fans to grander action ahead.
This third volume of a YA series finds a sinister king growing more dangerous and a teenager who can track the fae torn in her allegiances.
Elise Thompson has the Sight. She’s always been able to detect the hidden feathers, pointy ears, or other characteristics of fae beings roaming the Mortal Realm. While working in the academic advising office on a college campus, she meets freshman Alexis Dearborn, a Halfling (half fae, half mortal) whose snake tattoo moves. When Elise compliments her body art, Alexis says, “I don’t have any tattoos.” Elise is used to her strange gift and doesn’t press the issue. She’s focused on her upcoming trip to Paris. The fae are allergic to iron and love older cities built mostly from stone. When she reaches Paris, she sees that her tour guide, Tommy, is an elf. He reports back to Sirius, leader of the elves, in Tír na nÓg (the Faery Realm) about the girl who can see past his glamour. The elves realize Elise could tip the scales in battling the Wild King, who’s collected an army of Solitary fae, each of whom has drifted from the civilized Courts and mutated. This pestiferous contingent has been hunting down Halflings and pressing them into service with wild magic. Battles in the Mortal streets for innocents are inevitable. In this latest installment of the Faery Realms series, Ridge (Divided Worlds, 2018, etc.) continues to skillfully blend action, mythology, and YA romance. Aside from numerous elves, the cast is a truly eclectic one—Elise is half Japanese and her best friend, Naomi, is an African-American with the skin condition vitiligo. Meanwhile, Finch, a female elf smitten with Elise, proves perpetually naive of the Mortal Realm and provides comedy relief. The bond among these girls is sweet, and would deftly carry the fantasy narrative minus the grisly Solitary fae (a mutated elf has mismatched eyes, “one a deep, solid red, the other a bulging, oozing yellow”). The author pushes her protagonists slowly but steadily toward a massive confrontation with the Wild King, which should be the central action in the next volume.
An engaging series installment that points fantasy fans to grander action ahead.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-359-23696-1
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
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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