by Alessa Ellefson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 24, 2013
A creative, well-crafted narrative filled with colorful characters, a conflicted heroine and a multifaceted plot.
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The first of an intended trilogy inspired by Arthurian legend, this ambitious, imaginative debut novel intertwines fallen angels, dark magic, modern-day threats and teenage angst.
After the suspicious death of a classmate, teenage loner Morgan Pendragon is sent away in disgrace from the Swiss Catholic boarding school where she has spent most of her life. She’s sent to the home in Wisconsin she has never seen, to parents—a mother and stepfather—who never visited. The only friendly face belongs to the family’s elegant, mute lawyer, who’s drawn with enigmatic finesse. The unhappy teen learns that she’s to attend school with Arthur, the half brother she recently met for the first time. The school, it turns out, is located in a secret land directly beneath Lake Winnebago. It houses a training ground for modern-day Knights of the Round Table, aka KORT, young warriors-to-be who battle against Earth-dwelling fallen angels—the Fey—who have long been at war with humankind. The KORT students learn weaponry, combat and the ability to call upon elemental magic, while a Catholic priest oversees their spiritual needs. (Religious faith is an intriguing if sketchy element here; how it develops over the next two novels in the trilogy remains to be seen.) Bullied by students suspicious of her ignorance of the world they’ve known since birth, Morgan begins to question their zealous desire for all-out destruction of the Fey, even as she puzzles out the possibility that the world might be weakening against the worst of the magical evils. While Morgan struggles to find a place in her new world and wonders about the mystery of the father she never knew, she begins to realize that not everyone is what they seem—herself included. Ellefson keeps readers guessing and juggles imaginative twists, placing her heroine under an increasing threat that escalates to a suspenseful ending guaranteed to leave readers hungry for the next installment.
A creative, well-crafted narrative filled with colorful characters, a conflicted heroine and a multifaceted plot.Pub Date: May 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482065442
Page Count: 450
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Leigh Bardugo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2019
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
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New York Times Bestseller
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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by Leigh Bardugo ; illustrated by Dani Pendergast
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by Kevin Hearne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 2020
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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