Even the requisite romance is drowned in florid prose and uneven characterization
Madeline Landry, the daughter of one of the richest and most powerful noble houses of a nuclear future, hopes to empower society's weakest without endangering her own wealth and comfort.
In the month since Madeline's seen her cruel father banished (Landry Park, 2014), peace seems further than ever. The wealthy Uprisen loathe Madeline's willingness to work with the Rootless—the de facto enslaved class forced to handle spent uranium. The short-lived Rootless, on the other hand, have no trust for Madeline's slow-moving moderation. As if that weren't enough, some dastardly villain keeps artistically murdering Uprisen in Madeline's ancestral home. The very model of Martin Luther King’s white moderate, “paternalistically believing she can set the timetable” for the Rootless' freedom, Madeline is a bundle of contradictions. She's unendingly concerned with the styles and fabrics used in her clothing while primly mocking those interested in "fashion and celebrity gossip." Unwilling to risk her ancestral home, she begs for order while the police rampage through the Rootless ghetto. Though she knows the Rootless live in starvation, she wants to "convince them it will be better to wait" while she attends endless dinners of "seared bluefin tuna," "bacon-flecked spinach," and "lamb with mint sauce." Poor little Madeline, who laments that being a pale-skinned redhead among the darker Uprisen makes her "different."
Even the requisite romance is drowned in florid prose and uneven characterization . (Science fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3949-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
What could be interesting worldbuilding drowns in infelicitous prose and inexplicable machinations
Urban fantasy whose original ideas aren't sustained by the overall package.
In this sequel to Lightbringer (2011), Wendy just tries to survive in the complicated dual world she inhabits. She's inherited the duties of a Reaper from her mother, who recently died and then became an evil adversary—in that order. Wendy exists simultaneously in the worlds of the living and the dead, taking care of her siblings in the real world but using her Light to destroy maggoty Walkers in the parallel Never, the world of the dead. When a new and dangerous opponent arises among the dead, Wendy's erstwhile (and deceased) boyfriend, Piotr, navigates the overly complex metaphysics and politics of the Never in an attempt to help her. Meanwhile, Wendy discovers a never-known family of aunts, grandmothers and female cousins, Reapers all, and most definitely not on her side. Realism is not enhanced by Piotr's friends: Lily, who, like the Tiger Lily of Peter Pan for whom she is named, plays generic exotic Indian rather than an individual from an actual tribe, and ghostly flapper Elle, whose Damon Runyon–esque dialogue ("it's the cat's meow to doll up and ritz it up for a night again") feels as forced as Piotr's frequent das and nyets.
What could be interesting worldbuilding drowns in infelicitous prose and inexplicable machinations . (Fantasy. 13-15)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61614-632-0
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Pyr/Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In the end, choppy prose and the present tense make this moody, dreamlike tale of a special girl in a religious dystopia...
A young woman comes of age in an isolated community with stifling codes of conduct.
Emmeline, not quite 16, lives in a settlement of 600-odd people huddled in hungry solitude in the frozen north. With her birthday approaching, Emmeline isn’t looking forward to her coming-of-age, when leering Brother Stockham of the settlement’s leadership will begin to court her in earnest. Disabled, suffering from chronic pain, prone to self-harm and Stained by the Wayward actions of her long-dead grandma’am, Emmeline should be grateful for Brother Stockham’s attentions, but she prefers Kane, a quiet, handsome boy her own age. Perhaps her dreams will lead her to the Lost People and win her the respect she needs to choose her own partner. This slightly magical alternate history features the Canadian prairie as an unpeopled wilderness save for this mix of Francophones, Anglophones, and trilingual mixed-race Métis who speak French, English and First People’s languages such as Cree and M’ikmaq. Worldbuilding suffers despite its potential. Nonsensically, after five generations, the settlement’s people haven’t managed to form a mutually intelligible pidgin, and the language groups don’t mix (except when they do) and don’t understand one another’s languages (but seem to have no problem doing so).
In the end, choppy prose and the present tense make this moody, dreamlike tale of a special girl in a religious dystopia read just like all the others . (Fantasy. 13-15)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4197-1235-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
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