With a tighter editorial hand, this book could have been captivating.
According to ancient demon lore, the ghost of a recently deceased emperor takes his successor as a host in order to ensure continuity of power, but somehow Emperor Askar Molasca’s ghost finds his new home in the body of 17-year-old Andín dal Rovi, a feisty Antrimanian girl.
Andín is brooding because her father will not allow her to go to university when the demon possession takes place. The possession is not complete, and Andín begins to communicate with the demon/emperor speaking to her inside her head—and sometimes taking over her mouth, often with comical effect. He is just as confused as she is as to why he’s not in the body of his successor. Readers will join them in their confusion as the story progresses and Andín begins to take on any number of incarnations in the many dreams that haunt her. Seen as a threat, Andín is exiled from her home country of Antriman, and in search of an exorcism, she travels to distant lands to resolve her possession issues. Bigelow introduces intriguing feminist themes, but they get lost as she tries to infuse too much into this slow, drawn-out journey, layering it with planetary black holes, demon lore, and political turmoil as well as gender identity and sexual orientation. The worldbuilding includes geographically based racial differentiation; relatively light-skinned Andín encounters beautiful, dark-skinned, kinky-haired Yshe, who joins her.
With a tighter editorial hand, this book could have been captivating. (map) (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-940924-14-4
Page Count: 349
Publisher: Dreaming Robot
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Two Rio Grande Valley high schoolers flirt with cutting out early but find reasons to finish school in this purposeful but intense tale. For Beto, it’s a combination of pride, disinterest in school and a clash with his caring but harsh father that sends him stalking away to spend the night in a Dumpster. For Beto's longtime friend Jessy, it’s a strong desire to be an artist, plus the strain of hearing her father beating her mother and knowing that her turn will be coming up one of these nights, that drives her to head for the bus to San Antonio. Using a mix of tenses and all three persons, Saldaña lays out his characters’ thoughts and emotional landscapes in broad strokes—creating a third angle of view by adding Beto’s little brother Roelito, who works his nalgas off in school but shows early signs of an ominous anger, as another narrative voice. The action takes place over the course of a little more than 12 hours, neatly capturing the spontaneity of teen impulses. Teen readers chafing at the domestic bit will find food for thought here. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55885-607-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
“Death is a period / at the end of a sentence,” concludes Annaleah, the 16-year-old protagonist of Schutz’s captivating fictional follow-up to her verse memoir (I Don’t Want To Be Crazy, 2006). And much like the resolute finality fixed in that tiny dot, Annaleah spends a great deal of this free-verse novel stuck contemplating the harsh reality that her sometime boyfriend, Brian—a seemingly healthy, dark-haired, cloudy-blue–eyed 17-year-old—has just dropped dead on the basketball court. Reeling from both physical loss and lack of closure to the meaning of their clandestine relationship, Annaleah finds herself routinely visiting and addressing the deceased Brian, until a chance graveside encounter yields advice that finally begins to hit home: “Nothing grows here,” says Brian’s grandmother, “besides grass.” At first blush appearing to pull out all the melodramatic stops in classic teen fashion, these refreshingly spare lines tackle tough relational issues—intimacy, risk, abandonment—with aplomb, making for a moving tale that also effectively shows teens how life can go on. (Fiction/poetry. 14 & up)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 970-0-545-16911-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PUSH/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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