Strong messages about female empowerment permeate an inventive fantasy waiting for its conclusion.
In the second volume of the Shamra trilogy, Dara must learn who she is and where her people came from if she plans to confront the Chaos that threatens her people.
After defeating the Trocs in Curse of the Shamra, the first volume of The Shamra Chronicles, child hero Dara returns to assess the damage and prepare for her next battle against her greatest foe yet. But, despite the previous novel’s momentum, she must first learn about her people, the Shamra, their struggles and how they came to leave their homeland. Briana, who had appeared in Dara’s dreams, relates the lengthy history of the Shamra people as the two girls evade their enemies in a game of cat-and-mouse. Two hundred years ago, the Shamra were enslaved by the Kimra; Dara’s ancestor Drea led the rebellion to overthrow them. In a prescient move after the Pyrrhic victory, the priest, farmer and artisan clans fled the land in search of safer realms. But the fierce hunter clan, led by Drea, stayed, although a core group of hunters traveled with the priest-led refugees to ensure that their true history was not lost. The refugees suffered under the priests’ demands for female subservience—a pervasive issue in the saga—while Drea struggled with in-fighting and betrayal among her clan. As new generations mature, a pattern of misogyny and disloyalty develops in the Shamra people, with recurrent themes of the burden of leadership, the thrill of the hunt and the general unreliability of males. The repetition grows tiresome. Eventually, the Shamra discover that their immorality is not innate—it’s the working of Chaos, a force that infiltrates societies and destroys them from within. Dara’s ancestors defeated and temporarily contained Chaos, but now it threatens to break loose and corrupt the Sharma yet again. Being the middle book of the trilogy, this volume contains mostly backstory with no attempt at conclusion, which wouldn’t disappoint if its presentation weren’t so muddled. Fans of the first volume and readers looking for another realm to explore will enjoy the world-building, but they’ll have to wait until the series’ next volume to see if Dara truly is the savior she’s prophesized to be.
Strong messages about female empowerment permeate an inventive fantasy waiting for its conclusion.Pub Date: May 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-1934267165
Page Count: 303
Publisher: Edge Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
This fresh reworking of a Greek myth will resonate.
An otherworldly Latinx retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in the South Bronx.
Pheus visits his father in the Bronx every summer. The Afro-Dominican teen is known for his mesmerizing bachata music, love of history, and smooth way with the ladies. Eury, a young Puerto Rican woman and Hurricane Maria survivor, is staying with her cousin for the summer because of a recent, unspecified traumatic event. Her family doesn’t know that she’s been plagued since childhood by the demonlike Ato. Pheus and Eury bond over music and quickly fall in love. Attacked at a dance club by Sileno, its salacious and satyrlike owner, Eury falls into a coma and is taken to el Inframundo by Ato. Pheus, despite his atheism, follows the advice of his father and a local bruja to journey to find his love in the Underworld. Rivera skillfully captures the sounds and feels of the Bronx—its unique, diverse culture and the creeping gentrification of its neighborhoods. Through an amalgamation of Greek, Roman, and Taíno mythology and religious beliefs, gaslighting, the colonization of Puerto Rico, Afro-Latinidad identity, and female empowerment are woven into the narrative. While the pacing lags in the middle, secondary characters aren’t fully developed, and the couple’s relationship borders on instalove, the rush of a summertime romance feels realistic. Rivera’s complex world is well realized, and the dialogue rings true. All protagonists are Latinx.
This fresh reworking of a Greek myth will resonate. (Fabulism. 14-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0373-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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