A magically pleasant, if structurally familiar, series opener.
This YA fantasy brings an unsuspecting teen to a summer camp for magicians.
In Louisiana’s St. Malo Bayou, 14-year-old Rowan Dupard is on a fishing trip with his father and his younger brother, Nathaniel. Rowan is bored, swirling his finger in the water. He believes only a “stroke of magic” can save the trip. He then sees a shimmery film on the water that pricks his finger. Suddenly, he’s transported through a portal to “the realm.” He awakes at Camp Tituba, where teen magi are grouped by family skill and trained for the summer. But as the kids touch a magic wand to be sorted into color-coded families (miner, nurse, seafarer, aviator, and seer), Rowan causes the wand to cycle through all five hues. Baba, protector of the realm, thinks Rowan is a security risk. Hilda, director of the Migus Protection Organization, believes he belongs. To learn various aspects of the camp and to mine the stones through which they channel magical belief, the teens break into groups. Rowan is teamed with Zinnia Stone, Milton Zephyr, Ikki Ken, Rashi Rivers, and Tempest Squall. Will they learn to work together before the rogue magician Lefou strikes? Borne’s series opener crosses the rough-and-tumble novelty of summer camp with the structure of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. Worldbuilding and the mystery of why Rowan is different carry much of the narrative. Initially, dramatic moments seldom interrupt readers’ tour of the realm, until a giant sea horse attacks Rowan and the taciturn Ikki finally speaks. Later, breaches of the camp by Lefou’s followers, the Furious, help sustain the tension. Milton and his mom, Magus Mildred Zephyr, provide Rowan with more immediate threats; the former has no concept of teamwork and the latter tries to have him removed from the camp. While the author’s prose is often simple, she sometimes uses challenging words without clearly defining them in the text (“Magus Zephyr responds with excellent elocution”). By the summer’s end, Rowan returns to his father with no lost time thanks to the “time continuum.” The lingering image of a face “imprinted” on a tupelo tree provides an eerie finish.
A magically pleasant, if structurally familiar, series opener.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73292-843-5
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Aurora Book Company
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The well-paced romantic tension is a highlight of this enjoyable duology closer.
Even a war driven by gods can’t sever communication between journalist lovers Iris and Roman in this steampunk-adjacent romantic adventure.
A prologue sets the scene: Dacre, a god strummed to sleep by magic in Divine Rivals (2023), will not slumber forever. His willingness to wage war to acquire more powerful magic leads him to lay waste to entire towns, and Inkridden Tribune journalist Iris Winnow and war correspondent Roman Kitt can no longer be assured the other is safe—or even still alive. In Iris’ world of cigarette smoke, copper pipes, and driving goggles, colleagues affectionately call each other by their last names, watch each other’s backs, and face danger on the front lines. Though Underling Correspondent Roman is traveling with Dacre’s army, he questions why he was healed of his grievous wounds, while at the same time, he gradually recovers memories of Iris and recalls that she was special to him. Their magically connected typewriters allow for the rediscovery of their love and for communicating potentially deadly information about the invasion of Hawk Shire. The story primarily unfolds from Iris’ and Roman’s viewpoints, and while the prose occasionally uses well-worn phrases, Anglophiles will particularly enjoy the worldbuilding, and returning readers will welcome appearances from Capt. Keegan Torres; her wife, Marisol; and Dacre’s archnemesis—and wife—the goddess Enva. Main characters present white.
The well-paced romantic tension is a highlight of this enjoyable duology closer. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250857453
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
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
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