A swift tale of romance for the young teen with a warrior heart.
Rileigh, a beautiful reincarnated samurai, is starting a new life in the finale to the Katana trilogy, which tones down the action even as it ramps up the supernatural suspense.
Rileigh, sassy and courageous, has now graduated from high school and is reunited with Kim, with whom she’s been in love for over 500 years. However, before she and Kim can begin a normal life as contemporary older teens, their powerful nemesis, the murderer Sumi, is back to get what she’s always wanted: Kim. Sumi performs a ritual that enables her to switch bodies with Rileigh. Rileigh is horrified to find her psyche and soul trapped within the body of the woman she’s loathed for centuries, and her ki is weakening by the moment. If she can’t find a way back into her own body quickly, she will be stuck forever. With Kim by her side, she begins a fraught journey to regain her identity and convince her fellow samurai that she is Rileigh, though in the wrong body. Adding dimension to the tale, the engrossing flashback chapters to 1400s Japan detail Sumi’s heart-poisoning history in the hands of a cruel kidnapper.
A swift tale of romance for the young teen with a warrior heart. (Paranormal romance. 12-15)Pub Date: March 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7387-3911-3
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Flux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
A deliciously disturbing, twisted tale.
Teens endure fallout from a game of Bloody Mary.
Everybody’s done it at some point: You look in the mirror and repeat the name Bloody Mary. Sometimes, the legend says, you’ll see your true love. Sometimes they say you’ll see the ghost’s face, and it means you will die young. But these four fourth grade friends—Grace, Calvin, Elena, and Steph—didn’t count on their little game’s still affecting them five years later. They were just having some spooky fun in Elena’s deceased grandmother’s room, after all. But now, even after all these years have passed, each of them still sees a shape behind them whenever they look in a mirror. But the frights really begin when a new girl arrives at school. Her name is Mary. The author effectively and slowly ratchets the tension and dread, crafting some cleverly frightening sequences that fans of the genre will love. Less effective is the characterization: As each chapter pivots perspectives, some readers may have to double back and sort out which of the troubled teens they’re following. As the scares pile up and the descent into madness moves forward, the characterization gets a bit crisper, but the first few chapters may pose a bit of a hurdle. The novel’s conclusion is satisfactory, but the real highlights here are the spooky sequences. The teens are all presumed White.
A deliciously disturbing, twisted tale. (Horror. 12-15)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-67927-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not much forward momentum but a tasty array of chills, thrills, and chortles.
The victory of Jacob and his fellow peculiars over the previous episode’s wights and hollowgasts turns out to be only one move in a larger game as Riggs (Tales of the Peculiar, 2016, etc.) shifts the scene to America.
Reading largely as a setup for a new (if not exactly original) story arc, the tale commences just after Jacob’s timely rescue from his decidedly hostile parents. Following aimless visits back to newly liberated Devil’s Acre and perfunctory normalling lessons for his magically talented friends, Jacob eventually sets out on a road trip to find and recruit Noor, a powerful but imperiled young peculiar of Asian Indian ancestry. Along the way he encounters a semilawless patchwork of peculiar gangs, syndicates, and isolated small communities—many at loggerheads, some in the midst of negotiating a tentative alliance with the Ymbryne Council, but all threatened by the shadowy Organization. The by-now-tangled skein of rivalries, romantic troubles, and family issues continues to ravel amid bursts of savage violence and low comedy (“I had never seen an invisible person throw up before,” Jacob writes, “and it was something I won’t soon forget”). A fresh set of found snapshots serves, as before, to add an eldritch atmosphere to each set of incidents. The cast defaults to white but includes several people of color with active roles.
Not much forward momentum but a tasty array of chills, thrills, and chortles. (Horror/Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-3214-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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