A consistently engaging character-driven otherworldly adventure.
In Fite’s YA novel, an avid gamer’s latest obsession is an all-too-real role-playing adventure populated by characters who need his help.
Eighteen-year-old Nathan Daniels was only 4 when his parents disappeared; they left one night to play a role-playing game and never came back home. Now, Nate, much like his lost parents, loves RPGs, and he plays them online. He plays his favorite one with his same-aged neighbor and best friend, Jan Kim, and his younger adoptive brother, Thomas. The new video game store in his Illinois town has something he’s never seen before: Using a virtual-reality headset that seems oddly antiquated, Nate enters the kingdom of Ileria. This game is hyper-realistic, engaging his olfactory sense and putting him in the company of surprisingly distinctive nonplayer characters. Launching a quest isn’t so easy, though Nate quickly realizes that Ileria is up against the nefarious Horde and its goblin-like hordlings. As he—alongside elves and a giant white cat with shades of purple and pink—battles these malicious beings, it’s soon apparent that Ileria is much more than it seems. Fite deftly balances the teen hero’s life with his adventures in Ileria. Nate periodically exits the game; while this interrupts the action, the protagonist’s complicated relationships make the Illinois setting just as enthralling. He cares for Thomas, who uses a wheelchair due to a genetic disorder, but the two often butt heads (“I wasn’t going to continue the debate since Thomas was, as usual, oblivious to his own screw-ups”), and Nate seemingly has romantic feelings for Jan, who is both an unabashed geek and a high school cheerleader dating a popular jock. Readers learn about Ileria and its people at the same rate that Nate does, and will ask the same questions: Who is this Princess Aliana? And how does he have such brand-new abilities as heart-whispering (essentially telepathy) and magic? The plot twists prove rewarding, even if readers will predict a few, and the final pages hint at a sequel.
A consistently engaging character-driven otherworldly adventure.Pub Date: May 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780989520430
Page Count: 365
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Black is building a complex mythology; now is a great time to tune in.
Black is back with another dark tale of Faerie, this one set in Faerie and launching a new trilogy.
Jude—broken, rebuilt, fueled by anger and a sense of powerlessness—has never recovered from watching her adoptive Faerie father murder her parents. Human Jude (whose brown hair curls and whose skin color is never described) both hates and loves Madoc, whose murderous nature is true to his Faerie self and who in his way loves her. Brought up among the Gentry, Jude has never felt at ease, but after a decade, Faerie has become her home despite the constant peril. Black’s latest looks at nature and nurture and spins a tale of court intrigue, bloodshed, and a truly messed-up relationship that might be the saving of Jude and the titular prince, who, like Jude, has been shaped by the cruelties of others. Fierce and observant Jude is utterly unaware of the currents that swirl around her. She fights, plots, even murders enemies, but she must also navigate her relationship with her complex family (human, Faerie, and mixed). This is a heady blend of Faerie lore, high fantasy, and high school drama, dripping with description that brings the dangerous but tempting world of Faerie to life.
Black is building a complex mythology; now is a great time to tune in. (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-31027-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
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