Offers tantalizing glimpses into imagination-inspiring rooms full of untold stories.
In this work translated from Japanese, 30 homes from worlds real and imagined are revealed in watercolor-style illustrations.
From lighthouse to treehouse, tower to subway station, each home in this collection is charmingly rendered in digitally colored hand-drawn sketches that evoke “the warmth of a picture book.” Accompanied by cutaways detailing the home’s history, inhabitants, and plumbing, every page transports readers to the scene of a new story. Some homes, like “The Post Office of the Dragon Tamer,” with its dragon stable, convenient payment window, and rarely used bathtub, exist outside of familiar space and time. Others, like the unprofitable “Kaidan-Do Bookstore,” filled with shelves of used books and run by a lonely shopkeeper, could appear around the corner in your own neighborhood. The homes and the vignettes describing them are clever and tenderly expressed; many are Japanese or East Asian, but other cultures and locations are represented. Equally fascinating are the substantial sections detailing Yoshida’s process and craft. A background graphic artist for games and manga, Yoshida also includes sidebars sharing his research on roofs and toilets, documenting his own work studio, and revealing the time periods and countries that inspired each house. Readers with an interest in illustration, architecture, or worldbuilding will find much to pore over in this visually engaging art book.
Offers tantalizing glimpses into imagination-inspiring rooms full of untold stories. (select bibliography) (Illustrated fiction. 12-adult)Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781419761249
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes.
The Plague has left a population divided between Elites and Ordinaries—those who have powers and those who don’t; now, an Ordinary teen fights for her life.
Paedyn Gray witnessed the king kill her father five years ago, and she’s been thieving and sleeping rough ever since, all while faking Psychic abilities. When she inadvertently saves the life of Prince Kai, she becomes embroiled in the Purging Trials, a competition to commemorate the sickness that killed most of the kingdom’s Ordinaries. Kai’s duties as the future Enforcer include eradicating any remaining Ordinaries, and these Trials are his chance to prove that he’s internalized his brutal training. But Kai can’t help but find Pae’s blue eyes, silver hair, and unabashed attitude enchanting. She likewise struggles to resist his stormy gray eyes, dark hair, and rakish behavior, even as they’re pitted against each other in the Trials and by the king himself. Scenes and concepts that are strongly reminiscent of the Hunger Games fall flat: They aren’t bolstered by the original’s heart or worldbuilding logic that would have justified a few extreme story elements. Illogical leaps and inconsistent characterizations abound, with lighthearted romantic interludes juxtaposed against genocide, child abuse, and sadism. These elements, which are not sufficiently addressed, combined with the use of ableist language, cannot be erased by any amount of romantic banter. Main characters are cued white; the supporting cast has some brown-skinned characters.
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798987380406
Page Count: 538
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters.
Two young people save the world and all the magic in it in this series opener.
When tall, dark-haired, white-skinned Christopher Forrester goes to stay with his grandfather in Scotland, he ventures to the top of a forbidden hill and discovers astonishing magical creatures. His grandfather explains that Christopher’s family are guardians of the “way through” to the Archipelago, where the Glimourie Tree grows—the source of glimourie, or the world’s magic. Black-haired, olive-skinned Mal Arvorian, a girl from the Archipelago, is being pursued by a murderer, and she asks Christopher for help, launching them both on a wild, dangerous journey to discover why the glimourie is disappearing and how to stop it. Together with a part-nereid woman, a ratatoska, a dragon, and a Berserker, they face an odyssey of dangerous tasks to find the Immortal, the only one who can reverse the draining of magic. Like Lyra and Will from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Mal and Christopher sacrifice their innocence for experience, meeting every challenge with depthless courage until they finally reach the maze at the heart of it all. Rundell throws myriad obstacles in her characters’ way, but she gives them tools both tangible (a casapasaran, which always points the way home, and the glamry blade, which cuts through anything) and intangible (the desire “to protect something worth protecting” and an “insistence that the world is worth loving”). Final art not seen.
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593809860
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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