A familiar but enjoyable fantasy with an intriguing heroine.
Two magical friends seek their destinies in this debut YA novel.
Fifteen-year-old Nara Dall, the adopted daughter of Bylo the laborer, doesn’t know anything about her origins or the long scar that runs all the way down her back. Her best friend, Mykel Aragos, is strong and hardworking but self-conscious about the scar from a surgery to heal his cleft palate. Both teens live in the impoverished town of Dimmitt on the southeastern coast of the Great Lands. Dimmit is preparing for its triennial announcement ceremony, during which local adolescents are tested for magical abilities. The town has not produced a gifted teen in many years, but Nara suspects that she might be discovered at the event. “Not only would” talented young people “earn money in royal service or private employment, but the magic was a gift from Dei. A divine blessing. A reminder that they were loved.” Nara learns from Bylo the secret reason no one in Dimmitt has been chosen—and what it has to do with her—and she seeks to rectify the situation. But it doesn’t go as planned, forcing Nara and Mykel to flee for their lives. Nara’s untrained abilities draw them into a power struggle between dark forces that is about to grip the Great Lands, during which she may finally learn about her own mysterious past. In this series opener, Willson writes in a simple prose that delicately summons his fantasy world to life: “A thin-bladed ornate dagger called a ceppit was the instrument used by the priest to reveal a youth’s magic potential. The priest would intone a prayer and use the ceppit to impale each child’s palm.” While the premise and setting come from the most common tropes of YA fantasy, the author does a good job making the realm come alive by peopling it with complex characters and including worldbuilding flourishes like the runes of the Great Land’s holy book, the Cataclysmos. Readers should be happy to return for the next volume to see what Nara and her friends are up to under Willson’s capable eye.
A familiar but enjoyable fantasy with an intriguing heroine.Pub Date: March 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9996150-2-7
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Seeker Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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