A savage YA read filled with fish men, cutting wit, and supernatural gore.
The first volume of a paranormal horror series delivers a tale about a New England town in the grip of a monstrous cult.
Fourteen-year-old Abigail Thorndike, of Arkham, Massachusetts, lives on the rich side of town. As September arrives, she’s set to enter the prestigious Arkham Academy. Joining Abby will be her best friends, Sindy Endicott and Nate Baxter. As a final summer bash, the trio attends a carnival. There, they encounter a clique of the town’s rich and powerful scions—Bryce Coffin, Charity Duckworth, and Eleazar Grant—among others. Surprisingly, the cool kids allow Abby and her friends to tag along as they raise a ruckus inside the carnival. Later, as Abby is pressured to drink alcohol, her head begins pounding. She escapes the scene only to end up in a mirrored fun house. Inside, she sees nightmare versions of herself before blacking out from intense pain. She wakes up at home in bed and has little choice but to leave for her first day at Arkham Academy. She continues to experience “dizziness and loathing,” but this time after blacking out, she awakens to find the school infested with vile, disc-mouthed fish men. These fearsome creatures have “spines and fins sprouted in irregular patches” across their exposed skin, “colorless and milky” eyes, and “ragged and bloody red” gills. Robinson (The Last Son of Ahriman, 2015, etc.) and Rodriguez (Skylanders: Light in the Dark, 2016) make superb use of author H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional town of Arkham as well as the Deep Ones (anthropoid fish). Commentary on class divisions is plentiful because Nate’s family lives across town, and he and his father work as groundskeepers for the wealthy families. Igniting this page-turner, however, is the mystery behind the Daughters of Arkham, a charitable organization of blue-blooded women, most of whom seem to be widows. While teen drama engulfs Abby, she’s also cursed as the only one who can see Arkham’s fish men. And though the characters are young adults, their liberal use of words like “slut” marks this story for older teens. The end cleverly wraps around an early detail, broadening the saga for its next installment.
A savage YA read filled with fish men, cutting wit, and supernatural gore.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9895744-1-9
Page Count: 428
Publisher: Th3rd World Studios
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
