A bloody, action-stuffed rescue mission in the supernatural world of the Fae.
In Book 2 of Horowitz’s (Shattered Blue, 2015) YA fantasy series, The Light Trilogy, a teen’s battle with brutal metaphysical forces develops her inner skills.
Teenager Noa Sullivan and her two Fae companions, brothers Callum and Judah Forsythe, dive into a collapsing Portal that allows travel between Monterey, California, and the world of Aurora, home to the Fae. They find themselves in an alternate universe where Noa must develop her own innate strengths—human and nonhuman—to rescue her little sister, Sasha. Noa’s love for Sasha spurs her to battle mystical forces in Aurora, and the Forsythe brothers’ belief in Sasha’s paranormal powers, unusual even among the Fae, causes them endless conflict over the best way to keep her safe. The new, cruel ruler of Aurora imprisons Callum and Judah, and Noa persists in her hunt for Sasha, encountering multiple physical trials along the way and assembling a posse of girl helpers. The action is relentless. Noa’s physical trials are central to her character development—the tasks hone her latent abilities to master her physical environment and are often grisly. Noa sustains a shattered shoulder, plummets down a chute so violently she assumes she’s dead, and is “slammed against one wall and then another” by a flood’s rushing waters. The reader may feel as pummeled as Noa as the gore and Fae body count pile up: “The rush of Fae slipped and fell, crashing through the now blood-and-flesh slopped spikes.” However, the strong, active storyline and deft worldbuilding help override potential reader fatigue, and YA fans will be hooked by Noa’s badassery.
A bloody, action-stuffed rescue mission in the supernatural world of the Fae.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9745956-7-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Papaloa Press
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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