The author plays the long game in this engaging, layered, slow-burning fantasy series opener.
Survivors of an apocalypse discover a new world in this YA fantasy.
Alex Chegasa turns 18 years old today. She’s one of the few who lived through "the Orange,” a world-destroying event involving bombs. She lives in Danvers, Massachusetts, in an old school with her adoptive guardians, Danny and Calesta. While rummaging through abandoned homes for “trinkets,” Alex uses her power of detecting auras to sense a presence nearby. The entity is a dog, whom Alex names Jen, after her dead mother. Later, Alex, her guardians, and friends Roberto and Abi venture into the town of Salem. When they meet another band of survivors who are armed, tragedy strikes. Alex goes home and uses her Firestone, a gift from her mother, to burn down her past and start fresh. She decides to search for Jericho, a benevolent community. Meanwhile, in the distant Bearaig, a teen named Billey NicNevin lives with her “State-sponsored” family. She suffers an abiding loneliness that’s only lessened by her bond with trees. One day, she meets a “beautiful young woman” named Geilis, who comes and goes like a spirit. Neither Billey nor Alex fathoms that each one shares a hidden connection to the fae King Arthanius Chegasa, ruler of a place called Spirismus. Can Alex and her new companion, Iggy Dragonrider Thrumblar, escape Jericho to learn more? Hall begins a new series with ambitious worldbuilding and a tantalizing narrative structure. Alex's and Billey’s chapters alternate with first-person perspectives, keeping events intimate and on parallel tracks. Many genre tropes entwine, including apocalyptic survivors developing powers and a scandal happening in the fae courts. A deep exploration of character emotions ensures careful pacing, so casual fantasy fans may need patience as the separate arcs build toward each other. Alex’s romance with the equally powerful Iggy is intriguing, as “his feelings confused me, and I wanted to read him but knew he would know, would repel my energy.” Throughout, nature is lauded as a healing power, and the message that society should be more than just “a group of people living in the same place” is excellent.
The author plays the long game in this engaging, layered, slow-burning fantasy series opener.Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 339
Publisher: Leirsinn Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The well-paced romantic tension is a highlight of this enjoyable duology closer.
Even a war driven by gods can’t sever communication between journalist lovers Iris and Roman in this steampunk-adjacent romantic adventure.
A prologue sets the scene: Dacre, a god strummed to sleep by magic in Divine Rivals (2023), will not slumber forever. His willingness to wage war to acquire more powerful magic leads him to lay waste to entire towns, and Inkridden Tribune journalist Iris Winnow and war correspondent Roman Kitt can no longer be assured the other is safe—or even still alive. In Iris’ world of cigarette smoke, copper pipes, and driving goggles, colleagues affectionately call each other by their last names, watch each other’s backs, and face danger on the front lines. Though Underling Correspondent Roman is traveling with Dacre’s army, he questions why he was healed of his grievous wounds, while at the same time, he gradually recovers memories of Iris and recalls that she was special to him. Their magically connected typewriters allow for the rediscovery of their love and for communicating potentially deadly information about the invasion of Hawk Shire. The story primarily unfolds from Iris’ and Roman’s viewpoints, and while the prose occasionally uses well-worn phrases, Anglophiles will particularly enjoy the worldbuilding, and returning readers will welcome appearances from Capt. Keegan Torres; her wife, Marisol; and Dacre’s archnemesis—and wife—the goddess Enva. Main characters present white.
The well-paced romantic tension is a highlight of this enjoyable duology closer. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250857453
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Truly fantastic.
This dark fantasy duology opener has a magic school, a death, and five students who find themselves stranded in the wilderness.
Ren Monroe is a promising student wizard at Balmerick, a private school in the city of Kathor. Along with her best friend, Timmons, Ren is one of the few welfare students attending on a scholarship, and despite being one of the most accomplished people at the school, finding a placement in one of the top houses is proving difficult and is a hurdle in the way of the secret mission Ren has set out to accomplish. When a portal spell goes awry and Ren, Timmons, and four other students from different walks of life are thrown together into the Dires, an uncharted land where the last dragons lived, one of them ends up dead and the rest need to learn to work together to make their way back home before they succumb to the harsh environment or the terrifying revenant following them. This may well be the chance Ren was looking for to prove her worth. Placing elements of a locked-room mystery and an original magic system within the familiar trappings of a school for magic, this is a no-holds-barred tale of revenge, atonement, and the pursuit of justice set in a world diverse in skin color and social classes. Ren is a protagonist for the ages: equal parts smart, calculating, and ruthless, forming a lethal package as an avenging angel.
Truly fantastic. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-66591-868-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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