A dash of time travel gives a fresh flavor to the quickly staling dystopia genre.
Just as apprentice wordsmith Echo, a historian who’s studied the progression of the English language, prepares to flee his totalitarian city in the year 2447, a mad scientist unleashes the Time Strainer. Programmed to retrieve Tyler Sherwood, who revolutionized theories about matter in the 21st century, the time machine mistakenly delivers identical twin females, Taylor and Sheridan. Because of his abilities, Echo is assigned to monitor and translate for the teenage sisters. The initially slow third-person narration picks up pace as it alternates between Echo’s and Sheridan’s points of view. After learning about a Mafia-like organization that controls society and the mad scientist’s real plans for the Time Strainer, the twins decide to escape. Although kissing hasn’t changed in four centuries, Sheridan’s not sure she can completely trust Echo to help them. What the story lacks in detail of the futuristic time period, it makes up in its attention to the evolution of language and religion. Taylor and Sheridan’s quick-thinking idioms allow them to make plans right under the guards’ noses and strike while the iron is hot. For once, literature buff Sheridan outshines her physicist-prodigy sister. Dramatic twists and turns to the very end ensure readers’ attention and the possibility of an equally thrilling sequel. (Science fiction. 13 & up)
Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-212392-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Immersive and engaging, despite some flaws, and destined to capture imaginations.
Magic, mystery, and love intertwine and invite in this newest take on the “enchanted circus” trope.
Sisters raised by their abusive father, a governor of a colonial backwater in a world vaguely reminiscent of the late 18th century, Scarlett and Donatella each long for something more. Scarlett, olive-skinned, dark of hair and attitude, longs for Caraval, the fabled, magical circus helmed by the possibly evil Master Legend Santos, while blonde, sunny Tella finds comfort in drink and the embraces of various men. A slightly awkward start, with inconsistencies of attitude and setting, rapidly smooths out when they, along with handsome “golden-brown” sailor Julian, flee to Caraval on the eve of Scarlett’s arranged marriage. Tella disappears, and Scarlett must navigate a nighttime world of magic to find her. Caraval delights the senses: beautiful and scary, described in luscious prose, this is a show readers will wish they could enter. Dresses can be purchased for secrets or days of life; clocks can become doors; bridges move: this is an inventive and original circus, laced with an edge of horror. A double love story, one sensual romance and the other sisterly loyalty, anchors the plot, but the real star here is Caraval and its secrets.
Immersive and engaging, despite some flaws, and destined to capture imaginations. (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-09525-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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