First in a planned series, this fantasy adventure relies on well-known tropes, but its complexities intrigue.
In Helming’s debut fantasy novel, a California teenager is sent to her godfather in Greece, where she learns startling news about her true destiny.
“Strong women aren’t simply born. We are forged through the fires of life.” These words from her mother, Diana, have inspired Helene Crawford, almost 18, to be resilient. She’ll need this trait when she gets the terrible news that Diana has been killed, most likely by arson. Helene, meanwhile, barely escapes from a murder attempt and learns that she must leave California, go to Athens, and live with her legal guardian until she’s 21. (Helene has no known father, having been conceived in vitro.) Just as startling, several indications lead Helene to believe her mother is still alive. In Greece, she attends her new school, where she suffers the usual new-girl problems and weighs the attentions of two attractive young men. But odd events keep happening, and Helene discovers she has the key to a portal that leads to Gaea, a strange land—one she’s dreamed about—where the tyrannical Greek gods now live. She discovers information about her mother and learns of a prophecy: one day the Protogena will be born from a virgin goddess and help overthrow Zeus, restoring harmony. As Helene struggles to understand and control new powers, she strikes the first blows against Zeus in what promises to be a long war. Helming intelligently sets figures from Greek myth amid the modern-day Greek debt crisis to comment on greed, hubris, and how ordinary people survive. She offers complexity of detail and adventure with intriguing tie-ins to mythology and science. Nevertheless, many ingredients are familiar: an emotional teenager who seems ordinary but is chosen for a special purpose; a portal to another land; two romantic choices; and wish-fulfillment largesse, such as the portal transforming Helene into a perfect physical specimen. Helene notes that she’s comfortable with herself at last, an unfortunate message for girls: only flawlessness can permit positive self-esteem.
First in a planned series, this fantasy adventure relies on well-known tropes, but its complexities intrigue.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9984811-0-4
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Cool Planet Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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