HUSH

A stubborn small-town girl uncovers earth-shattering secrets as she tries to solve a murder.

Following her brother Kieran’s death from the Indigo Death, aka the Blot, an ink-borne plague, 17-year-old Shae and her Ma have lived as outcasts outside dusty, dying Aster. In Montane, only the black-robed, warrior Bards—tax-collectors, magic-users, executioners—from High House may read or write, and stories about or icons of the mythical kingdom of Gondal are forbidden. When a visit from three Bards ends in death, disaster, and a coverup, Shae abandons her only real friend, Fiona, and rejected suitor, Mads, to sneak into the Bards’ stronghold and training academy. Predictability follows, as Shae proves magically powerful, one of the few females with the gift of Telling, and both pawn and pariah. Also unsurprisingly, Shae’s small, personal quest threatens the whole system. Farrow’s first foray into young adult literature has a message, but its foundations are underdeveloped: Lacking specificity and context, Montane is a generic Western pre-industrial setting; the shifts in genre and tone (from pastoral to police procedural to political revolution) are abrupt; the pacing is rushed; and the resolution awaits a sequel. Most characters are white; only a minor villain is explicitly identified as having dark skin.

A standard fantasy with substandard development.