Inconsistent in tone, with lackluster worldbuilding.
Reeling from a recent family trauma, a teen finds a chosen family in a coven of witches.
Freshman Elliot and his mother, the new vice principal at his Catholic high school, are recent transplants to Los Angeles. Before the move, Elliot’s father died by suicide, an event that was followed by Elliot’s own suicide attempt. On Elliot’s first day at school, a group of students sees evidence of his inherent ability with magic and asks him to join their coven. At an initiation ritual that night, the coven members identify their goals, apparently bringing them about through magical means. For example, sweet Rachel becomes a popular kid after wishing to be cool, and Elliot becomes clairvoyant after wishing to never be taken by surprise again. Meanwhile, an unidentified hooded figure occasionally appears and commands a demonic creature to kill people. This facet of the book’s worldbuilding is unexplained, and these extremely violent scenes feel misplaced in a story that’s otherwise light on horror. The full-color illustrations are cinematic in scope. Most members of the coven are queer, and the group is ethnically diverse; Elliot is white. Delightful queer chosen-family themes aside, the descriptions and portrayals of sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression are in many cases stereotypical or inaccurate.
Inconsistent in tone, with lackluster worldbuilding. (author’s note, character designs, volume 2 preview) (Graphic paranormal. 15-18)Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781681160849
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Legendary Comics YA
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A slasher flick spliced with Crime and Punishment, this engrossing debut novel asks complex philosophical questions in a...
An adolescent, yet Nietzschean, examination of humanity and horror.
Nita is a monster. Literally. She can heal her own wounds and even block her pain receptors. But she and her mother also deal in monsters, species regulated by the International Non-Human Police, selling their body parts on the black market. Her ghoulish mother hunts and kills, while Nita dissects them with a meditative grace, trying to think of herself as innocent. But when Nita’s conscience inconveniently prevents her from vivisecting a live specimen, she’s kidnapped and taken to the Amazon, caged by people in the same business. Menaced by a zannie (creatures that feed off physical pain) and a ruthless woman, Nita, who is mixed species (with a brown-skinned human father and a nonhuman mother), has to figure out how to escape and whether she has any morals to live by. The vivid setting, Mercado de la Muerte (one of several Death Markets worldwide) in a sweltering South American jungle populated by buyers, sellers, and sold, is matched by a zipping plot interspersed with deliciously horrifying and gory scenes of dismemberment and destruction. Equally intriguing is the constant musing on what makes a monster, how people respond to trauma and control, and how one’s choices affirm or deny one’s own humanity.
A slasher flick spliced with Crime and Punishment, this engrossing debut novel asks complex philosophical questions in a pleasingly hard-to-stomach way. (Fantasy. 15-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-86354-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging
Audrey Rose Wadsworth, 17, would rather perform autopsies in her uncle’s dark laboratory than find a suitable husband, as is the socially acceptable rite of passage for a young, white British lady in the late 1800s.
The story immediately brings Audrey into a fractious pairing with her uncle’s young assistant, Thomas Cresswell. The two engage in predictable rounds of “I’m smarter than you are” banter, while Audrey’s older brother, Nathaniel, taunts her for being a girl out of her place. Horrific murders of prostitutes whose identities point to associations with the Wadsworth estate prompt Audrey to start her own investigation, with Thomas as her sidekick. Audrey’s narration is both ponderous and polemical, as she sees her pursuit of her goals and this investigation as part of a crusade for women. She declares that the slain aren’t merely prostitutes but “daughters and wives and mothers,” but she’s also made it a point to deny any alignment with the profiled victims: “I am not going as a prostitute. I am simply blending in.” Audrey also expresses a narrow view of her desired gender role, asserting that “I was determined to be both pretty and fierce,” as if to say that physical beauty and liking “girly” things are integral to feminism. The graphic descriptions of mutilated women don’t do much to speed the pace.
Perhaps a more genuinely enlightened protagonist would have made this debut more engaging . (Historical thriller. 15-18)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-27349-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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