Sleeping Beauty wakes up in the 21st century; clichés ensue. When Princess Talia pricks her finger on a spindle on her 16th birthday, she fulfills a curse that puts the entire kingdom of Euphrasia to sleep for centuries. Modern teen Jack, on the lam from a guided bus tour of Europe, discovers the slumbering kingdom and wakes the princess in a decidedly creepy date-rape–like scenario. Both wishing to flee the clutches of the king, they escape together to Jack’s home in Miami, where the girls are either vapid sluts or nerdy brains and the boys are mostly just clueless. The narration shifts between Talia and Jack, but the device sheds little light into their characters; both are too broadly drawn to engage readers. She seems petulant and pampered but turns out to be kind and adaptable; he’s supposedly a slacker, but he’s really brimming with motivation. All too easily they buff away each other’s sharp edges, though their lack of chemistry makes their inevitable declarations of love forced and awkward. There is nothing fresh about this reinterpretation. (Fantasy. 11-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-087419-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
Pulled in different directions by her heart and by family duty, a daughter of the noble Fujiwara clan also has an angry ghost to appease in this busy sequel to Little Sister (1996). Two years after Mitsuko entered the land of the dead in search of her sister’s soul, ominous dreams remind her of her vow to repair a small shrine in which she once took refuge. At the same time, her father announces that Mitsuko is to marry an 11- year-old prince. She once again calls on Goranu, the mischievous, immortal shape-changer who fell in love with her. Exchanging insults and tart retorts, the two grow closer as Mitsuko faces a dragon, the shrine’s vengeful kami (spirit), and a host of other supernatural beings. Under Goranu’s tutelage, Mitsuko learns how to use her wits, and by the end has overcome the treacherous kami, helped engineer the prince’s marriage to her sister, and even met Lord Emma-O in the Court of the Dead. More than most sequels, this story relies on knowledge of its predecessor. Dalkey supplies a glossary and historical postscript, but readers unfamiliar with the first book will miss nuances in characters and relationships, and have only a sketchy picture of the 12th- century locales and social patterns. Together, however, the two novels combine a courageous teenager’s well-articulated escape from the limits and preconceptions forced on her by a rigid, highly structured upbringing with a colorful, not altogether earnest, series of encounters with powerful beings from Buddhist and Shinto lore. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-201652-X
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
A weary young soldier in a future empire discovers that there’s more than one way to conquer in this thought-provoking tale from the author of Songs of Power (2000). Thirty-nine of the T’Chin Confederacy’s 40 planets have surrendered to the Vivitare without a fight, but helping to subdue the 40th has left Ahvren vowing to study war no more. Returning to his highborn family’s new estate on T’Chin’s bustling capitol planet, he hears rumors of a plot against the emperor, and puts off making a decision about his future by plunging into an investigation. As he discovers too late, the rumor is wrong; it’s actually the emperor’s callous son and heir Dravik who’s the target—and the assassin is Ahvren’s own beloved sister Sabri. Along the way, Ahvren makes connections with representatives of several alien species, and thanks to some gentle prodding from a 600-year-old, insectile librarian (a “Bibliogoth”), he slowly comes to realize that the Vivitare are only the latest in a long line of would-be conquerors, all of which were eventually assimilated into the prosperous, stable, commerce-oriented Confederacy. With help from his new nonhuman associates, he rescues Sabri from a slow, agonizing execution, and ultimately frees himself from some preconceptions too. The tone is earnest, with only Ahvren’s odd compulsion to blurt out whatever he’s thinking to serve as comic relief, but this suspense/adventure/coming-of-ager is absorbing, and features several simplified but interestingly distinct alien cultures. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-029513-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
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