This exciting sequel’s concept explodes far beyond Epic, its 2007 predecessor. Epic (the game) is defunct, but a new game—Saga—has mysteriously appeared on New Earth’s computer system. Erik’s Cindella is the only character allowed to carry over; other people create new avatars. Immediately, vast numbers of players beocme addicted and fall sick. Meanwhile, a girl named Ghost and her anarcho-punk gang raid malls, destroying property to protest unfair class rankings. Ghost has no home; her consciousness goes back only six years to age nine. Who was she before that? Kostick reveals early how Ghost’s world features airboarding and anti-gravity technology while Erik’s tech-regressive society drives donkey carts: Ghost’s world is Saga, the game that Erik’s people are currently playing. Thousands of years ago on Earth, Saga’s characters sprang into consciousness—Saga’s population is human. But two of its original Reprogrammed Autonomous Lifeforms remain, one a Dark Queen thirsting for immortality. Only Cindella and Ghost can challenge the Dark Queen’s enslavement and potential genocide of New Earth’s meta-humans. Clean prose, remarkable story. (Science fiction. YA)
Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-670-06280-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2008
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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. 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
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Broken people, complicated families, magic, and Faerie politics: Black’s back.
After the tumultuous ending to the last volume (marriage, exile, and the seeming collapse of all her plots), Jude finds herself in the human world, which lacks appeal despite a childhood spent longing to go back. The price of her upbringing becomes clear: A human raised in the multihued, multiformed, always capricious Faerie High Court by the man who killed her parents, trained for intrigue and combat, recruited to a spy organization, and ultimately the power behind the coup and the latest High King, Jude no longer understands how to exist happily in a world that isn’t full of magic and danger. A plea from her estranged twin sends her secretly back to Faerie, where things immediately come to a boil with Cardan (king, nemesis, love interest) and all the many political strands Jude has tugged on for the past two volumes. New readers will need to go back to The Cruel Prince (2018) to follow the complexities—political and personal side plots abound—but the legions of established fans will love every minute of this lushly described, tightly plotted trilogy closer. Jude might be traumatized and emotionally unhealthy, but she’s an antihero worth cheering on. There are few physical descriptions of humans and some queer representation.
Whether you came for the lore or the love, perfection. (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-31042-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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