Rife with atmosphere, adventure and romance, this is a fantasy world worth getting lost in for a while.
Half-breed Darkling Avaline Hall makes a triumphant return in the second installment of the Blythewood series.
Readers will be reunited with Ava a mere two months after her first, nearly fatal victory over the Shadow Master, Judicus van Drood. But when young girls begin to mysteriously disappear, it becomes clear that van Drood and his shadow demons are back and more determined than ever to see darkness prevail. Shrouded in mist and mystery, turn-of-the-20th-century New York again provides an atmospheric backdrop as Ava and her friends, both human and mystical, realize they must break down the walls of prejudice and join forces if they hope to win the battle against van Drood. That’s easier said than done, as secrets abound, and the desire to conceal them threatens to destroy the alliance before it’s even formed. Ava herself, having felt like an outcast for so long, struggles to conceal the undeniable truth of her half-breed blood and her love for the Darkling boy named Raven. Though the tale and its message are sometimes heavy-handed, readers will readily relate to Ava and the other characters who struggle to embrace their differences and to stand up and fight for what they believe in.
Rife with atmosphere, adventure and romance, this is a fantasy world worth getting lost in for a while. (Fantasy. 12 & up)Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-78477-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
A rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come.
A heady blend of courtly double-crossing, Faerie lore, and toxic attraction swirls together in the sequel to The Cruel Prince (2018).
Five months after engineering a coup, human teen Jude is starting to feel the strain of secretly controlling King Cardan and running his Faerie kingdom. Jude’s self-loathing and anger at the traumatic events of her childhood (her Faerie “dad” killed her parents, and Faerie is not a particularly easy place even for the best-adjusted human) drive her ambition, which is tempered by her desire to make the world she loves and hates a little fairer. Much of the story revolves around plotting (the Queen of the Undersea wants the throne; Jude’s Faerie father wants power; Jude’s twin, Taryn, wants her Faerie betrothed by her side), but the underlying tension—sexual and political—between Jude and Cardan also takes some unexpected twists. Black’s writing is both contemporary and classic; her world is, at this point, intensely well-realized, so that some plot twists seem almost inevitable. Faerie is a strange place where immortal, multihued, multiformed denizens can’t lie but can twist everything; Jude—who can lie—is an outlier, and her first-person, present-tense narration reveals more than she would choose. With curly dark brown hair, Jude and Taryn are never identified by race in human terms.
A rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come. (map) (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-31035-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution.
A teenage girl finds herself alone after everyone else in her town mysteriously disappears, leaving her scrambling to figure out how to find them all.
One late summer day, everybody in July Fielding’s town disappears. She is left to piece together what happened, following a series of cryptic signs she finds around town urging her to “GET THEM BACK.” The narrative moves back and forth between July’s present and the events of the summer before, when her relationship with her best friend, cross-country team co-captain Sydney, starts to fracture due to a combination of jealousy over July’s new relationship with a cute boy called Sam and sweet up-and-coming freshman Ella’s threatening to overtake Syd’s status as star of the track team. The team members participate in a ritual in which they jump off a cliff into the rocky waters below at the end of their Friday practice runs. Though Ella is reluctant, Syd pressures her to jump. Short, frenetically paced sections move the story along quickly, and there is much foreshadowing pointing to something terrible that occurred at the end of that summer, which may be the key to July’s current predicament, but there is much misdirection too. Ultimately this is a story without enough setup to make the turn the book takes in the end feel fully developed or earned. All characters read white.
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780593327173
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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