A lively and optimistic alarm bell regarding the fractured state of the globe today.
This debut YA fantasy sees a teen prepare to battle the ills of the world and the sinister force responsible.
Seventeen-year-old Vida fled oppressive Russia for the more colorful San Francisco in 1962. There, she worked hard in school and started a family, hoping to keep alive the Sisterhood, a line of Druidic Priestesses begun in ancient Alexandria. Today, Vida is High Priestess of the Sisterhood and realizes that a planet ravaged by global warming, famine, and war must be saved immediately. She starts training Maya, her 15-year-old granddaughter, three years early for the Sisterhood. Their mystical enemy is the Dark Menace that “stokes the fires that cause the atrocities that are increasing around the globe.” Ready to help Maya are the constellations watching from above, including Draco (Latin for dragon) and Monoceros (Greek for unicorn). Under Vida’s tutelage, Maya begins utilizing her heritage as an Indigo Child, practicing telekinesis and harnessing her ability to communicate with and transform into animals. The pair trains in the nearby forest, but Maya also learns to slip through adjacent realms to access sacred sites like Stonehenge, the Royal Library of Alexandria, and the temple of Queen Hatshepsut. But will Maya learn enough in time to halt the Dark Menace? In this mystically inclined novel, Story casts as wide a net as possible to round up the world’s troubles—including war in Syria and bees suffering colony collapse—for presentation to young audiences. Vida even quotes the Spider-Man comics when she asserts, “With great power comes great responsibilities.” While the bulk of Maya’s adventures take place in her mind, Story’s vibrant prose indeed slips between time and space; opening a casket in Queen Hatshepsut’s chamber reveals that “crystals glow from within, and the radiating colors bounce off the walls and ceiling in a riot of color that is almost disorienting.” Readers may need patience during the heroine’s extensive training, but once true danger arrives, it is followed quickly by horrific consequences. And though a vital Manifesto is delivered universally, humanity’s imperfection will require more from the Sisterhood.
A lively and optimistic alarm bell regarding the fractured state of the globe today.Pub Date: April 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5426-6055-6
Page Count: 354
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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