A grim and despairing yet elegiac fantasy tale and unsentimental testament to humanity’s enduring spirit.
Thornbury’s debut YA fantasy novel features a girl on the run fighting to suppress her forbidden magic in a dying world.
The fantastical realm of Seramight is slowly succumbing to the Blight, a creeping malaise that kills anything it touches. When the city of Drasdark falls, only Terren remains, a final, multicultural refuge of haves and have-nots nestled between a long-drained sea and a bottomless chasm that separates the world of men from the magic-infused Deadlands. A single bridge—which is a living organism—spans the intervening gap. Those who tire of life may cross it, either dying at the midpoint or passing on and receding by degrees into the bleakness beyond. None ever return. Elika, who is 15 years old, watches the bridge, identifying those who cross so that her pack of street orphans can loot that person’s lodgings for coin and food. Life in Terren is hard, but Eli is surviving. Terren’s priests have long blamed magic for the Blight; to this end, they have decreed the living bridge’s destruction, but all attempts have failed. Eli, however, wounds it when she stabs it. This reveals her to be not merely infected with magic (an “Echo” in the local parlance), but a creature in full possession of it. Suddenly, the Blight hastens its encroachment. The people of Terren turn against the Echoes, first purging them with blood-salt before resorting to more violent measures. Eli wants her magic gone, yet she cannot rid herself of it—the harder she tries, the worse the situation becomes. Is there no way she can save herself, her pack, and her city?
The author writes in the third person, past tense from Eli’s perspective. The prose is a proficient blend of narrative action, inner reflection, and mostly naturalistic dialogue. Eli is an unusual protagonist: On the one hand she exhibits standard heroic traits (courage, determination, loyalty, compassion). On the other, she rails fiercely against her expected role. Rather than embracing the power within her, she clings stubbornly to what she’s been taught, risking her life and submitting to torture in her efforts to be cleansed. Thornbury’s depiction of magic—and Eli’s true nature—is as artful as the plot is pessimistic. There is little to feel good about in the barbaric acts the people of Terren suffer as the Blight approaches. The author neither glosses over these atrocities nor revels in them; instead, the reader is presented with a morose, almost moribund sense of inevitability. Humanity’s plight goes from bad to worse, ever spiraling downward. The effect is cheerless yet oddly refreshing in a genre that so often fails to make good on its threats. Eli’s journey can be read as a parallel to the emotional progression of one caring for a terminally ill relative. She passes through stages of loss, and the end is a foregone conclusion, yet it brings a kind of catharsis, clearing the way for new beginnings. Hard-bitten fantasists should approve.
A grim and despairing yet elegiac fantasy tale and unsentimental testament to humanity’s enduring spirit.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9780645497038
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Shadow Lore Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes.
The Plague has left a population divided between Elites and Ordinaries—those who have powers and those who don’t; now, an Ordinary teen fights for her life.
Paedyn Gray witnessed the king kill her father five years ago, and she’s been thieving and sleeping rough ever since, all while faking Psychic abilities. When she inadvertently saves the life of Prince Kai, she becomes embroiled in the Purging Trials, a competition to commemorate the sickness that killed most of the kingdom’s Ordinaries. Kai’s duties as the future Enforcer include eradicating any remaining Ordinaries, and these Trials are his chance to prove that he’s internalized his brutal training. But Kai can’t help but find Pae’s blue eyes, silver hair, and unabashed attitude enchanting. She likewise struggles to resist his stormy gray eyes, dark hair, and rakish behavior, even as they’re pitted against each other in the Trials and by the king himself. Scenes and concepts that are strongly reminiscent of the Hunger Games fall flat: They aren’t bolstered by the original’s heart or worldbuilding logic that would have justified a few extreme story elements. Illogical leaps and inconsistent characterizations abound, with lighthearted romantic interludes juxtaposed against genocide, child abuse, and sadism. These elements, which are not sufficiently addressed, combined with the use of ableist language, cannot be erased by any amount of romantic banter. Main characters are cued white; the supporting cast has some brown-skinned characters.
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798987380406
Page Count: 538
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
A dark and gripping feminist tale.
A young woman faces her past to discover the truth about one of her nation’s heroes.
When Effy Sayre, the only female architecture student at her university in Llyr, wins the competition to design Hiraeth Manor for the estate of the late Emrys Myrddin, national literary figure and her favorite author, it is the perfect opportunity to leave behind a recent trauma. She arrives to find the cliffside estate is literally crumbling into the ocean, and she quickly realizes things may not be as they seem. Preston, an arrogant literature student, is also working at the estate, gathering materials for the university’s archives and questioning everything Effy knows about Myrddin. When Preston offers to include her name on his thesis—which may allow her to pursue the dream of studying literature that was frustrated by the university’s refusal to admit women literature students—Effy agrees to help him. He’s on a quest for answers about the source of Myrddin’s most famous work, Angharad, a romance about a cruel Fairy King who marries a mortal woman. Meanwhile, Myrddin’s son has secrets of his own. Preston and Effy start to suspect that Myrddin’s fairy tales may hold more truth than they realize. The Welsh-inspired setting is impressively atmospheric, and while some of the mythology ends up feeling extraneous, the worldbuilding is immersive and thoughtfully addresses misogyny and its effects on how history is written. Main characters are cued white.
A dark and gripping feminist tale. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780063211506
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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