Ai Ling's second adventure is every bit as sensuous as Silver Phoenix (2009) in a tale that moves between two times and two cultures. Chen Yong, Ai Ling's unattainable love interest from her previous world-saving adventure, is traveling on a quest to find his unknown foreigner father. Ai Ling has premonitions of danger and stows away to join Chen Yong on his journey to the Europe-inspired country of his father's birth. Ai Ling's developing powers will be instrumental in fighting off pirates and sea monsters, but they may also be causing her strange dreams. These dreams, of her old antagonist Zhong Ye, appear as interleaved chapters within Ai Ling's own adventure. In these historical visions, Zhong Ye is not the archvillain defeated so recently. Instead, he's an eager young power player in the Empire's distant past, his search for success touched by love and betrayal. Zhong Ye’s tragic history, like Ai Ling's own, is grounded in sensuous and carnal detail. The meals alone—from perfectly spiced beef tongue in one country's past to sugar-encrusted almonds in another land's present—can be more enthralling than Ai Ling and Zhong Ye’s parallel quests. The intertwining of the two histories is rushed and chaotic, but lush detail will enthrall, from tantalizingly detailed food to gruesome demonic tortures. (Fantasy. 14 & up)
Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-173025-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning.
Two teens train to be society-sanctioned killers in an otherwise immortal world.
On post-mortal Earth, humans live long (if not particularly passionate) lives without fear of disease, aging, or accidents. Operating independently of the governing AI (called the Thunderhead since it evolved from the cloud), scythes rely on 10 commandments, quotas, and their own moral codes to glean the population. After challenging Hon. Scythe Faraday, 16-year-olds Rowan Damisch and Citra Terranova reluctantly become his apprentices. Subjected to killcraft training, exposed to numerous executions, and discouraged from becoming allies or lovers, the two find themselves engaged in a fatal competition but equally determined to fight corruption and cruelty. The vivid and often violent action unfolds slowly, anchored in complex worldbuilding and propelled by political machinations and existential musings. Scythes’ journal entries accompany Rowan’s and Citra’s dual and dueling narratives, revealing both personal struggles and societal problems. The futuristic post–2042 MidMerican world is both dystopia and utopia, free of fear, unexpected death, and blatant racism—multiracial main characters discuss their diverse ethnic percentages rather than purity—but also lacking creativity, emotion, and purpose. Elegant and elegiac, brooding but imbued with gallows humor, Shusterman’s dark tale thrusts realistic, likable teens into a surreal situation and raises deep philosophic questions.
A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning. (Science fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4424-7242-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
A rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come.
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. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
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