A magnificent supernatural saga striding confidently toward its finale.
This third installment of a YA series brings a superlative menace to New Orleans that may require vampires and witches to join forces.
Eight months ago, a monstrous hurricane demolished New Orleans. Sixteen-year-old Adele Le Moyne, despite the witch mark on her arm, has seemingly lost her telekinetic powers. Her coven, including friends Désirée Borges and Isaac Thompson, battled the Medici vampires. Isaac slayed Adele’s undead mother, Brigitte, to save the teenager’s life. Now, Adele has withdrawn from her coven and existence in general. Only when Niccoló, the Medici sibling who’ll do anything for Adele, throws her mother a funeral does the teen reawaken to the world. Meanwhile, Isaac, Désirée, and their friend Codi Daure have been tracking down those possessed by the rogue spirits disturbed by Callisto Salazar and his Ghost Drinkers coven. The trio also strives to protect the city’s numerous cemeteries from Calli’s succubi by using hexenspiegel (witches’ mirrors). Eventually, Adele warms to Nicco’s charm, allowing him to begin exploring ways to restore her magic despite the warning written by her ancestor Adeline Saint-Germaine 300 years ago: “Be safe and stay away from Niccoló Medici.” A vicious attack on Isaac by Emilio Medici bolsters this statement. But Nicco has his own plan to find Calli before an already ruined city can be brought even lower. In this penultimate volume of her series, Arden (The Romeo Catchers, 2017, etc.) brings further heat to her love triangle and a broader, more otherworldly canvas on which to paint her cast’s heroism. The plot’s historical context is, as always, wretched yet captivating. Adele visits Jazzland, an amusement park devastated by the storm, and walks “through piles of stuffed bears in prize booths that looked like they’d been mauled by real ones, and dunking tanks filled with swamp water.” Meaty supernatural components include the lwa (Haitian Vodou spirits) and the accompanying Guinée (a part of the Afterworld). But the true reward for the author’s fans is the continuously vital portrayal of these characters. Adele’s friends love her, and a sweeping gesture in the final third is sure to make the audience misty-eyed.
A magnificent supernatural saga striding confidently toward its finale.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9897577-4-4
Page Count: 650
Publisher: For the Art of it Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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