REMEMBER POMPEII

In Emers’ YA fantasy, an immortal being is determined to heal her fractured family—no matter how long it takes.

Kali Brewster and her family are Wanshiqi, a species of powerful, immortal beings with godlike powers that range from the ability to heal the sick to the capacity to destroy entire cities. Back in the year 79, for instance, Kali leveled a city: “The fall of Pompeii? Yeah, that was me.” By Wanshiqi standards, this kind of thing isn’t terribly taboo; after all, her grandfather sunk Atlantis and her mother destroyed the Aztec civilization. However, Kali trapped a Wanshiqi named Octavius under the ash of Pompeii, where he remains to this day. As punishment, Kali and her parents were sentenced by the powers that be to live among humans and reincarnate until Kali reaches her 17th human year and undergoes qifa, the Wanshiqi coming-of-age process. But because Kali uses her powers to ensure her own death, she and her family have gone through hundreds of reincarnation cycles. Her divorced parents are furious, but Kali isn’t ready to stop, and she thinks she can repair the family rift. Now that Kali is 16-going-on-17 yet again, she’s preparing to drag her parents—as well as her maternal grandparents and her Wanshiqi soulmate, Hunter—through it all again. This time, though, there’s more at play than she realizes. At its core, the first book in Emers’ Wanshiqi Trilogy is an exploration of how unprocessed trauma can spiral into other parts of one’s life, even if that life plays out over multiple centuries. Kali, with her many lifetimes of hiding her Pompeii-related trauma from her loved onesand her infliction of violence against herself, is often a sympathetic protagonist. That said, she also comes off as remarkably selfish at times, as shown most starkly in her violence against others and her persistence in extending her family’s reincarnation sentence. Emers’ worldbuilding is thorough and her supporting characters are well developed. The pacing of this dense story often drags, however, and readers may find the plot’s high school drama elements to be unnecessary and off-putting.

An intriguing and complex but slow-burning read.