The emotional impact these events had on individuals will certainly resonate, but understanding the conflict at large may...
This verse novel uses alternating narrators to document three siblings’ flight from the 1915 Armenian genocide.
The Donabedian family’s Christian faith makes them a target of the Ottoman Empire’s genocide. When violence erupts, the parents barely manage to create a diversion that allows three of their children to escape to the mountains. With meager food supplies and only vague directions on how to reach safety, the children’s courage is tested. But unexpected sources provide help, most notably Ardziv, an eagle who both occasionally provides scavenged food and narrates events from his aerial perspective. This device does help illuminate the broad scale of the government’s brutality, but Ardziv also complicates the question of the author’s intended audience. While the novel’s graphic violence lends itself to more mature readers, they may view the eagle’s narration and assistance with skepticism. The verse is often powerful, especially in its use of repetition, but it does not provide the author with much textual opportunity to fully explain the nature of the ethnic and religious conflict. From a design perspective, it’s unfortunate that the information provided on the opening map reveals that the siblings survive and make it to New York, which may diminish the novel’s tension for many readers.
The emotional impact these events had on individuals will certainly resonate, but understanding the conflict at large may still require supplemental reading. (Historical fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74397-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Insightful, admirable, and well executed.
A queer Black mage with a simple dream learns she is destined for far greater adventures.
Laura Ann Langston just wants to be an influential baker. However, 1937 America cares little about her sweet ambitions or that she traveled from a country town in Pennsylvania to New York City to make it happen. Several months in, Laura is flat broke with nowhere to call home, leading her to join the Bureau of the Arcane’s Conservation Corps. Laura is recruited by the formidable agent Skylark, head of the Colored Auxiliary’s regional Floramancy Division. After other areas’ teams go missing, Laura and Skylark set out on an ominous mission to the Ohio Deep Blight, a zone experiencing unnatural phenomena that have disastrous effects on people and animals. There, they use their capacity to control the Dynamism, an energy field that mages pull from. It’s there that Laura also uncovers a conspiracy and gains insight into the depths of her power. Readers are thrust into complex worldbuilding with familiar parallels to our world. Ireland makes advanced concepts accessible, and old photos, articles, and investigative reports bolster her uncanny ability to weave painful, real history into this new world. The bold narrative, told through Laura’s first-person and Skylark’s third-person perspectives, culminates in a captivating ending that eerily echoes many of the issues that presently plague the country, describing the destructive nature of capitalism and the impact its oppression wreaks on a nation.
Insightful, admirable, and well executed. (author's note, photo credits) (Historical fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-303822-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Stellar and haunting.
Ignoring things won’t make them go away.
Told in nonlinear chapters, the story follows Owen, a bisexual high schooler from small-town Pennsylvania who is on the autism spectrum. Owen is raped by someone he knows intimately while on the school’s annual trip for seniors. Covering for the perpetrator causes stress across many areas of Owen’s life, from his relationship with his ex-military father—a man who is not proactively addressing his PTSD—to his friends and his girlfriend, Lily. Once the rapist’s identity is discovered, the novel follows Owen in the immediate aftermath of the assault. The story is superbly told, and readers will be simultaneously on the edges of their seats as the narrative slowly draws closer to revealing the rapist’s identity and saddened by the waves of emotional and physical abuse Owen endures as he attempts to make the sexual assault investigation disappear. Other themes, such as Owen’s slow emergence from the closet and the milestone of his driver’s license, add additional complexity and humanity in support of the main storyline. Book clubs and discussion groups will have a lot to ponder. Backmatter directing readers to sexual assault resources would have elevated the title even further. The main characters are White; there is diversity in the supporting cast.
Stellar and haunting. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64567-332-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Page Street
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PROFILES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
