This sequel to Hawksong (2003) lacks its predecessor’s romance. Zane Cobriana has married hawk shapeshifter Danica, who’s now pregnant. His joy is tempered by worry: will the hawks and serpiente accept their half-breed child as ruler? Danica’s ill from her pregnancy with a cold-blooded cobra child. Worse, the powerful, snooty falcons threaten both kingdoms—they’re inexplicably related to the snakes but not to other birds. When ancient Syfka arrives, she demands the return of a falcon fugitive. It seems that disguised falcons, fleeing the wrath of their despotic government, are hiding throughout the hawk lands. Danica’s erstwhile lover is the runaway son of Syfka herself. As Zane battles improbable plot twists to rescue his people from diplomatic awkwardness, he finds a solution to hawk/serpiente racism: he forms a progressive colony for those who have no objections to mingling. Danica fades conveniently into the background, along with the question of what a half-hawk/half-cobra baby actually is. Mawkish goth characterization and improbable magic; for Atwater-Rhodes fans only. (Fantasy. 13-15)
Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-73072-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
A century before the events of Clare’s Mortal Instruments trilogy, another everyday heroine gets entangled with demon-slaying Shadowhunters. Sixteen-year-old orphaned Tessa comes to London to join her brother but is imprisoned by the grotesque Dark Sisters. The sisters train the unwilling Tessa in previously unknown shapeshifter abilities, preparing her to be a pawn in some diabolical plan. A timely rescue brings Tessa to the Institute, where a group of misfit Shadowhunters struggles to fight evil. Though details differ, the general flavor of Tessa’s new family will be enjoyably familiar to the earlier trilogy’s fans; the most important is Tessa’s rescuer Will, the gorgeous, sharp-tongued teenager with a mysterious past and a smile like “Lucifer might have smiled, moments before he fell from Heaven.” The lush, melodramatic urban fantasy setting of the Shadowhunter world morphs seamlessly into a steampunk Victorian past, and this new series provides the setup for what will surely be a climactic battle against hordes of demonically powered brass clockworks. The tale drags in places, but this crowdpleaser’s tension-filled conclusion ratchets toward a new set of mysteries. (Steampunk. 13-15)
Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7586-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
Despite the title, Hite’s latest is no sci-fi, futuristic effort, but a modern novel with a first-person narrative with echoes of such classics as Catcher in the Rye. Cecil lives in “historic” Bricksburg, a Virginia backwater made up of colorful eccentrics, where the biggest excitement is over who altered a local sign to read “Welcome to Hysteric Pricksburg.” Such vandalism is of felony proportions, and the leading suspect happens to be Cecil’s best friend, Isaac, who maintains his innocence as well as his cool. Throw in Cecil’s romantic struggle between the town’s fickle bombshell and the girl-next-door, Isaac’s younger sister, and this has all the makings of a conventional read; it transcends such labels with the addition of Hite’s keen sense of the absurd, Cecil’s mature, witty observations and his morose pronouncements about life on Earth. Cecil’s ongoing discourse on the problems of the universe grow trying, but readers will relate to—and laugh over—his simple struggle to find his way. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-5055-8
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
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