Fewer words would have made a better story.
A 15-year-old American girl and a half-fairy Irish boy fight to save the gate to the fairies' world.
Clare Macleod was born on Midsummer Day in an odd Irish house with a tree growing in the wall, but after her mother's death, when she was only 5, she and her father moved to the States. She's grown up with half-remembered stories of fairies her mother called the Strange. When they move back to the odd house, with its walls of stone and quartz and the yew tree living in it, Clare recalls and then meets Finn, a boy she shared infancy with. Finn, however, is actually half-fairy, several hundred years old, and the grandson of Balor, a demonlike man expelled from the fairies' world and now on the point of attacking the main gate between the fairy world and ours: Clare's yew tree. If the gate is destroyed, humans lose creativity and magic; fairies lose love. Catmull's omniscient perspective prevents the reader from entering into Clare’s or Finn's emotions: their actions are seen as though through a glass wall. Her mannered, consciously romanticized prose ("Even for Clare, to dive through a window that may be in the sky or may be in the water, a window on an island that floats at the heart of the Strange, was not an easy thing to do") creates further distance, muddling the worldbuilding beyond where most readers can suspend disbelief. Worst, the novel's conclusion isn't worth the number of pages it takes to get there.
Fewer words would have made a better story. (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-95347-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play.
Garber returns to the world of bestseller Caraval (2017), this time with the focus on younger, more daring sister Donatella.
Valenda, capital of the empire, is host to the second of Legend’s magical games in a single year, and while Scarlett doesn’t want to play again, blonde Tella is eager for a chance to prove herself. She is haunted by the memory of her death in the last game and by the cursed Deck of Destiny she used as a child which foretold her loveless future. Garber has changed many of the rules of her expanding world, which now appears to be infused with magic and evil Fates. Despite a weak plot and ultraviolet prose (“He tasted like exquisite nightmares and stolen dreams, like the wings of fallen angels, and bottles of fresh moonlight.”), this is a tour de force of imagination. Themes of love, betrayal, and the price of magic (and desire) swirl like Caraval’s enchantments, and Dante’s sensuous kisses will thrill readers as much as they do Tella. The convoluted machinations of the Prince of Hearts (one of the Fates), Legend, and even the empress serve as the impetus for Tella’s story and set up future volumes which promise to go bigger. With descriptions focusing primarily on clothing, characters’ ethnicities are often indeterminate.
Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play. (glossary) (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-09531-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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