THE NIGHTSILVER PROMISE

A girl with not enough destiny and her brother, who has too much, must rescue their mother.

In an alternate London, Mechanist priests preach from the Blueprints about how the Chief Designer “forged the looping golden tracks of the Celestial Mechanism” that tell people’s fates. Thirteen-year-old Paisley Fitzwilliam finally learns her stars’ track—and discovers that she’ll die before she’s 14. Meanwhile, Dax, her younger brother, who is publicly perceived as disabled, actually wears his uncomfortable leg brace to hide the fact that he is Dragon Touched. The Dragon Touched (the others are girls) all have dragon scales somewhere on their bodies. They are feared and hunted thanks to the prophecy about a male Dragon Lord who will bring back the Great Dragons. After the kids’ scientist mother performs a seemingly impossible experiment that shakes society’s foundations, she meets with an accident—but Paisley and Dax learn she’s not dead and that it was no accident. Teaming up with their mother’s apprentice, they set out to save her. In an alternate viewpoint, thief Roach serves the villainous Dark Dragon, showing readers what the heroes are up against and why. The characterization runs shallow, with didacticism from heroes and villains alike delivered in expository monologues, and the climax relies upon an underbaked deus ex machina. Most characters default to White; uncomfortably, the sole explicitly brown-skinned character calls Dax her master and pledges to give up her life for him.

A promising concept that fails to deliver.