A magical steampunk exploration of difference, danger, and sacrifice.
A girl who’s endowed with magic navigates a postwar society that’s populated by nefarious beings.
Safi Defoy and her family—her father and older sister, Ada—work hard to maintain a business in their stone-walled city that’s nestled in a green valley. A recent war, which devastated people and businesses alike, left Papa with damaged lungs. Like her deceased mother, Safi is a magician; with training, her electrical powers could prove to be of great value. Those who possess magic are in danger, however: Liches—the souls of dead magicians who died in the war but weren’t properly laid to rest—are searching for power and hunting living magicians. Liches hide behind deep disguises, making it hard to know whom to trust. Ada takes Safi to see a show by famous traveling magicians Sergio and Caliban. During their performance, they notice Safi’s unbridled magical sparks. Afterward, they invite her to be their apprentice, offering Ada and Papa hope that she’ll be kept safe. This volume focuses more on building this world, which evokes 19th-century Central Europe, and developing the endearing characters than on telling a propulsive narrative. When the climactic action does arrive, it wraps up quickly. The clean, regular, richly colored panels, which include emotionally resonant wordless sequences, communicate the emotional weight of the fantastical elements. Most characters are light-skinned, and some are racially ambiguous and cued queer. Ada is aromantic.
A magical steampunk exploration of difference, danger, and sacrifice. (Graphic fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9780063266599
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Breathtaking dragon battles peppered with musings on forgiveness, teamwork, and love.
Lunar Jones joins other planetary guardians to unravel clues from Proteus and save the solar system in this third series entry.
Lunar, a 15-year-old dragoon, is known far and wide and regarded as a hero on Mars, but his personal life contains tension. He’s bonded for life with Dread, the savvy war strategist King-Dragon of Mars, but the Dread Knights are leaving one by one to pursue other opportunities. Though he’s unhappy about this, Lunar doesn’t try to hold them back. Sorting out his feelings for Rose Proctor is another can of worms. Plus he’s preparing for the upcoming Solar Summit, which is held by the planetary dragons once every 500 years. Reminiscent of a dragon family reunion, the summit includes equal measures of information exchange, camaraderie, and squabbles, but the appearance of a shape-shifting Fear Dragon brings everyone to laser-focused attention as they rally against a monstrous unseen enemy. Lunar’s first-person narration presents him variously as an awkward teen, pep-talking mentor, and battle-savvy commander. The dragon battles rock, innovations abound, and the Proteus messages tantalizingly reveal themselves right up until the cliffhanger ending. Names and skin tones cue some ethnic and racial diversity among the smart, strong teenage crew members surrounding the white-presenting Lunar. Knowledge of the previous books is essential to fully appreciate this volume, which explores characters and situations from earlier entries; a prologue introduces the formidable new characters Doom and Gloom.
Breathtaking dragon battles peppered with musings on forgiveness, teamwork, and love. (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781665982016
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
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