A tense and spellbindingly gripping fantasy meditation on the horrors of the Holocaust.
In this supernatural novel, a young Jewish girl becomes invisible in order to flee the Nazis.
As Slater’s story opens, the Siegel family has moved several times in Germany, first to Weiler in 1938, then to the smaller town of Gemeinde in 1939, and finally to minuscule Ortschaft in the summer of 1940. Ortschaft, a town of only 10,000 residents, still seems amicable enough to its 200 Jewish inhabitants. Young Sophie Siegel may be hopeful, but readers know what’s coming. The restrictions and brutality increase even in Ortschaft until the horrifying day when Sophie, hiding in a closet, watches through a crack as Nazis kill her parents. Then she makes a shocking discovery: When those same Nazis search her closet, they don’t see her. She has become invisible. She’s still stranded in Nazi Germany, but now she’s able to watch unimpeded—and to do her best to foment resistance (including the outlandish hope of creating a gigantic golem to defend the Jews). Using this subtle, startling blend of historical fiction and richly imagined fantasy, Slater manages to craft that rarest of things: a Holocaust novel that feels new. The author has a keen eye for the small, true details of everyday life. The creeping, incremental degradations of Nazi Germany are portrayed with a dramatic immediacy often missing from history books. Slater is also very skilled at creating tense moments arising from Sophie’s invisibility. At one point, she’s standing in the middle of a room that’s being vigorously searched by Nazi soldiers: “For a long and terrifying few seconds, the redhead stood directly in front of Sophie, who was too cold and too scared to do anything but shake. If he had taken just one more step, he would have kicked her.”
A tense and spellbindingly gripping fantasy meditation on the horrors of the Holocaust.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-956769-11-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Library Tales Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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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