An entertaining yarn with imaginative make-believe and vigorous prose.
An African boy deploys incredible fighting prowess and a bag of tricks to recover a magic stone belonging to his subterranean tribe in this rousing fantasy.
Jones’ novel imagines a lost tribe called the Ankh Adar that has been living in a Namibian cavern for 200 years after escaping slave traders. Life underground has given the members eerie blue-gray eyes, a heightened sense of smell, and four times the strength and speed of other humans, in part due to their diet of glowing blue grubs that feed on the dung of the giant, man-eating bats that constitute the cave’s main downside. Also sustaining the tribe is the Bensaya stone known as “The Glimmer of Life,” a football-sized diamond whose yellow glow lets them grow produce and has healing properties. Anchoring the narrative is Oye, a put-upon 12-year-old whom the tribe considers a coward because he froze in fright while his father was killed by the bat-king Sidiki. When “palefaces” led by a mercenary named Bellevue steal the Bensaya diamond, superlative lady warrior Mahua sets out to retrieve it, taking Oye and his older brother Uchee along. The trio fight off hyenas as they track Bellevue and his posse, largely by their smell. Oye is separated from Uchee and Mahua, but he trails the stone to a freighter sailing off across the Atlantic. Oye boards ship the ship with the help of dolphins and is befriended by shambolic Cajun sailor Lafayette Boudreaux. Debarking in New Orleans, Oye revels in wonders unknown in the cave, like chewing gum, indoor showers, and nightlife in the French Quarter. Oye intermittently continues the search for the Bensaya, which embroils him in brawls with cops and Bellevue’s henchmen along the way to locating the mastermind Ether, a supermarket tycoon whose ancestors enslaved the Ankh Adar’s legendary hero Dobro.
Jones’ story has a Raiders of the Lost Ark feel, featuring exotic locales and a quest for an ancient Mcguffin. The narrative is powered by pint-sized superhero Oye, an endlessly plucky and resourceful kid who is forever twirling, somersaulting, pole-vaulting, and bashing bad guys with his Jak stick, or resorting to more arcane devices from his leather pouch, which has everything from a blow-gun loaded with tranquilizer darts to “forgetting powder” that wipes opponents’ memories when puffed in their faces. The action scenes are rollicking and inventive, boasting a panoply of unlikely weapons. (“Then like a king cobra snake, the boy leap forward and spit a combination of soap and water into the big man’s eyes. Waters turned and screamed rubbing his burning eyes with both hands.”) Jones’ writing is vivid and evocative, whether describing the sound of hungry glow-bugs (“like bacon frying in a pan full of hot grease”), the unsavoriness of villains (“Ether had the look of an expensive mortician, searching for a cheap corpse”), or the spell of a blues guitarist, whose songs “seemed full of hurt, despair, and problems, but also full of hope and life.” Readers will root for Oye as he treks resolutely through his oddball odyssey.
An entertaining yarn with imaginative make-believe and vigorous prose.Pub Date: April 14, 2023
ISBN: 9798389910607
Page Count: 289
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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