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GILDED SERPENT

From the Dark Shores series , Vol. 3

Sprawling yet intricate and completely engrossing.

The parallel storylines of Dark Shores (2019) and Dark Skies (2020) continue in this sequel that ties the two together.

Teriana, Marcus, Killian, and Lydia return as point-of-view characters in interwoven stories. Thematically uniting the protagonists is the idea of struggling against conflicting loyalties. Teriana and Marcus struggle with trust, both in terms of being able to trust each other, as they are technically enemies, and individually. Teriana is torn between protecting her people, held hostage by the Empire, or keeping the Empire from spreading into the West; Marcus longs for freedom from the Empire even as his loyalty to the men of his legion is challenged by his knowledge that there’s a traitor among them. Killian feels guilty over the choice he made between Lydia and Malahi, whose father is an inferior ruler, while Lydia’s struggles sneak up on her. The multiple storylines spread the characters to distant corners, presenting new worldbuilding opportunities. The balance between characters allows for a sense of time and travel while characters are on the move, with quicker check-ins preventing the pace from getting bogged down in between devastating revelations, deadly action, intrigue, and, of course, romance culminating in steamy scenes. The characters’ storylines resolve their immediate dilemmas while presenting new dangers for the next installment. Both the East and West feature casual diversity—skin tones (ranging from fair-skinned Lydia to black-skinned Teriana) are sometimes geographically linked but generally lack significance.

Sprawling yet intricate and completely engrossing. (Fantasy. 14-adult)

Pub Date: April 27, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-250-31779-7

Page Count: 576

Publisher: Tor Teen

Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021

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FOURTH WING

From the Empyrean series , Vol. 1

Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.

On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.

Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.

Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.

Pub Date: May 2, 2023

ISBN: 9781649374042

Page Count: 528

Publisher: Red Tower

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024

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IMPOSSIBLE CREATURES

From the Impossible Creatures series , Vol. 1

An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters.

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Two young people save the world and all the magic in it in this series opener.

When tall, dark-haired, white-skinned Christopher Forrester goes to stay with his grandfather in Scotland, he ventures to the top of a forbidden hill and discovers astonishing magical creatures. His grandfather explains that Christopher’s family are guardians of the “way through” to the Archipelago, where the Glimourie Tree grows—the source of glimourie, or the world’s magic. Black-haired, olive-skinned Mal Arvorian, a girl from the Archipelago, is being pursued by a murderer, and she asks Christopher for help, launching them both on a wild, dangerous journey to discover why the glimourie is disappearing and how to stop it. Together with a part-nereid woman, a ratatoska, a dragon, and a Berserker, they face an odyssey of dangerous tasks to find the Immortal, the only one who can reverse the draining of magic. Like Lyra and Will from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Mal and Christopher sacrifice their innocence for experience, meeting every challenge with depthless courage until they finally reach the maze at the heart of it all. Rundell throws myriad obstacles in her characters’ way, but she gives them tools both tangible (a casapasaran, which always points the way home, and the glamry blade, which cuts through anything) and intangible (the desire “to protect something worth protecting” and an “insistence that the world is worth loving”). Final art not seen.

An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-16)

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024

ISBN: 9780593809860

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024

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