Endurance will pay off for those interested in Lily’s fate, but they need to be mighty interested.
Lily and her three Egyptian lovers traipse hither and yon through the cosmos to save humankind.
It began in a New York museum when white, teenage Lily met and fell in love with the Reawakened (2015) sun god, Amon. Then Lily became a sphinx and traveled to the underworld to do battle with the evil sorceress, the Devourer, in Recreated (2016). Now, in the concluding episode, Lily possesses two other spirits: a lioness and an Irish fairy. Lily and her internal residents traverse the universe on unicorns along with their respective love interests, the gods Amon, Ahmose, and Asten. They have countless battles with gazillions of monsters like “sky demons,” a cross between gargoyles and wolves, and the Devourer (again!) in order to stop Seth, the Dark One, from his evil doings. Meanwhile, despite her wishes, Lily is morphing into yet another kind of ultimate goddess called Wasret. The first-person narrative alternates through each female’s perspective. It’s vastly imaginative, but this tale is so overwrought with multitendrils of plot tangles that by story’s end it’s difficult to tease them apart. It’s further bogged down with unnecessarily long descriptions of landscapes, references to Lily’s hair, and cringeworthy ardency: “He was devastatingly handsome in the way that the most wickedly desirable boys are.”
Endurance will pay off for those interested in Lily’s fate, but they need to be mighty interested. (Paranormal romance. 14-18)Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-55568-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes.
The Plague has left a population divided between Elites and Ordinaries—those who have powers and those who don’t; now, an Ordinary teen fights for her life.
Paedyn Gray witnessed the king kill her father five years ago, and she’s been thieving and sleeping rough ever since, all while faking Psychic abilities. When she inadvertently saves the life of Prince Kai, she becomes embroiled in the Purging Trials, a competition to commemorate the sickness that killed most of the kingdom’s Ordinaries. Kai’s duties as the future Enforcer include eradicating any remaining Ordinaries, and these Trials are his chance to prove that he’s internalized his brutal training. But Kai can’t help but find Pae’s blue eyes, silver hair, and unabashed attitude enchanting. She likewise struggles to resist his stormy gray eyes, dark hair, and rakish behavior, even as they’re pitted against each other in the Trials and by the king himself. Scenes and concepts that are strongly reminiscent of the Hunger Games fall flat: They aren’t bolstered by the original’s heart or worldbuilding logic that would have justified a few extreme story elements. Illogical leaps and inconsistent characterizations abound, with lighthearted romantic interludes juxtaposed against genocide, child abuse, and sadism. These elements, which are not sufficiently addressed, combined with the use of ableist language, cannot be erased by any amount of romantic banter. Main characters are cued white; the supporting cast has some brown-skinned characters.
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798987380406
Page Count: 538
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
A dark and gripping feminist tale.
A young woman faces her past to discover the truth about one of her nation’s heroes.
When Effy Sayre, the only female architecture student at her university in Llyr, wins the competition to design Hiraeth Manor for the estate of the late Emrys Myrddin, national literary figure and her favorite author, it is the perfect opportunity to leave behind a recent trauma. She arrives to find the cliffside estate is literally crumbling into the ocean, and she quickly realizes things may not be as they seem. Preston, an arrogant literature student, is also working at the estate, gathering materials for the university’s archives and questioning everything Effy knows about Myrddin. When Preston offers to include her name on his thesis—which may allow her to pursue the dream of studying literature that was frustrated by the university’s refusal to admit women literature students—Effy agrees to help him. He’s on a quest for answers about the source of Myrddin’s most famous work, Angharad, a romance about a cruel Fairy King who marries a mortal woman. Meanwhile, Myrddin’s son has secrets of his own. Preston and Effy start to suspect that Myrddin’s fairy tales may hold more truth than they realize. The Welsh-inspired setting is impressively atmospheric, and while some of the mythology ends up feeling extraneous, the worldbuilding is immersive and thoughtfully addresses misogyny and its effects on how history is written. Main characters are cued white.
A dark and gripping feminist tale. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780063211506
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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