A brilliant second act that can be read alone.
This thrilling sequel to Pon's Serpentine (2015) begins soon after the Great Battle between mortals and demons, as Skybright and her compatriots struggle with the fallout and face the looming threat of a new breach to the underworld.
Vivid sensory descriptions make the Chinese-inflected fantasy kingdom of Xia an immersive world. The mortal realm, the heavens, and the underworld are at once enchanting and terrifying, and at the story’s core are dynamic characters who resist confinement to archetypes. Torn away from her mortal life, Skybright grows to accept her nature as a serpent demon without rejecting her love for her friends. Zhen Ni, meanwhile, displays extraordinary cunning as she navigates her new duties as a wife while uncovering her husband’s dark plans. Kai Sen’s fierce determination to save Skybright and break the covenant makes him shed his dreamer personality to hone his magic. Stone, immortal intermediary to the gods, learns to respect and admire the mortals as he witnesses the strength of their will. The narration unfolds through their four points of view, shifting perspectives at key scenes rather than chapter by chapter. The resulting dramatic irony tests the characters’ integrity and their faith in one another. Still, they are impressively wise and compassionate, acting, when pressed, out of loyalty rather than bitterness.
A brilliant second act that can be read alone. (Fantasy. 15 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-944816-52-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Month9Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
The agenda is never less than obvious, but it’s a powerful tale nonetheless.
Clearly still aiming to shock, Herbstein recasts but does not tone down his debut novel, originally published for adult audiences as Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade (2001).
Punctuating her narrative with rapes (some of which are explicitly described) and other atrocities, from forced cannibalism to a flogging that leaves her scarred and one-eyed, blind old Ama relates her life’s hard story to her increasingly disturbed son Zacharias. He, though still enslaved, had been raised in a white official’s household and forced to suppress memories of his earliest years on the Bahian engenho (sugar plantation). Writing in terse, simple language, the Ghana-born author zigzags between points of view—injecting notes of irony (the slave ship that carries Ama to Brazil is named The Love of Liberty, for instance) and acidly matter-of-fact indictments of the brutality and hypocrisy of white slaveholding Christians. Callously ordered away just as his mother is dying, by the end Zacharias sheds his self-righteous naiveté, returns to calling himself by his birth name Kwame Zumbi and vows to share his true heritage with his own young daughter. Readers will be moved as much by Ama’s intelligence and unwavering sense of self respect as by her hideous experiences.
The agenda is never less than obvious, but it’s a powerful tale nonetheless. (map, cast list, glossary) (Historical fiction. 15 & up)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-88995-470-0
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Red Deer Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Patient and sophisticated readers will find the story compelling and deeply moving and its heroine unforgettable.
The events of the Anglo-Cherokee War in 1759-60 in South Carolina are brought vividly to modern readers in a meticulously researched tale.
Seventeen-year-old Catriona suffers grievous losses when her parents and brother are murdered by fellow settlers in a raid meant to look like an attack by Cherokee warriors. She is determined not only to escape to a British fort, but to somehow bring the murderers to justice. Traversing unforgiving terrain through Cherokee territory, she is severely wounded and her younger brother killed when they are attacked by a catamount. She is rescued and cared for by Malcolm Craig, who is in hiding for reasons of his own. Eventually, they reach the fort only to find more horrific troubles and deaths. A final meeting with her enemy ends in vengeance if not justice. The plot is dense and filled with violence and unremitting pain. Catie is not a perfect heroine; she doubts her decisions and believes that, like the last of the three Fates of Greek myth, she is the instrument of death. The author has wisely chosen to forgo the use of Colonial-era dialect, but all the elements of the tale are perfectly in keeping with the setting and time.
Patient and sophisticated readers will find the story compelling and deeply moving and its heroine unforgettable. (author’s note, sources) (Historical fiction. 15-18)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61117-429-8
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Univ. of South Carolina
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
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