While Arnold has written a compelling flipped fairy tale and commentary on misogyny, she’s missed the mark for her intended...
Arnold (Bat and the Waiting Game, 2018, etc.) blends an abusive romance-novel relationship and intense feminist and patriarchal imagery with the classic storyline of a prince saving a damsel from the lair of a dragon.
In a gray, medieval world, Prince Emory of Harding makes his way toward a dragon’s lair to rescue a damsel and make her his bride, in the process bringing light to the land and glory upon himself. The damsel cannot recall who she is, and so Emory names her Ama. They return to Harding, where Prince Emory is crowned king, and his mother announces they will be wed in a few months’ time, and Ama will give birth to his heir. Ama must learn how to be a queen and is reminded repeatedly that Emory’s desires are what matters—she is never allowed to forget that he “saved” her. When she does not comply with his wishes, she is brutally and sadistically punished, sexually, psychologically, and physically. What if, instead of being the hero’s beloved, you are your abuser’s captive? The symbolism and imagery, as well as the meaning of the sexual violence that is perpetrated upon Ama, may go over the heads of less sophisticated readers. All characters are white.
While Arnold has written a compelling flipped fairy tale and commentary on misogyny, she’s missed the mark for her intended audience. (Fiction. 15-adult)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-274232-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Delightfully messy.
A new college student discovers that his roommate is the prince of Hell—and he’s almost as annoyed by him as he is attracted to him.
Owen Greene’s determined to have a good first year at Point University come hell or high water—even if hell is exactly what he gets. A team of scientists recently created a portal to an alternate dimension that contains basically every stereotypical element of a hell—“demons, brimstone, rivers of lava.” But Owen is shocked to learn that Zarmenus Bloodletter, the so-called prince of Hell, is sharing his room. And though Zarmenus turns out to be a pretty good-natured guy (and hot, too—although Owen’s trying not to notice), neither he nor his soul-stealing cat, Bell, know how to be a good roommate. There’s a lot riding on this interdimensional exchange program, which could promote harmonious human-demon relations. But then Zarmenus ropes Owen into a fake-dating scheme for the ages—Owen will help party boy Zarmenus behave better, so his father doesn’t make him leave, and in return Zarmenus will help Owen secure the internship he desperately wants. Fun gags aside, Hell is thinly sketched, and Zarmenus doesn’t experience much culture shock on Earth. But as a slow-burn romance, the story is tender, undeniably electric, and charmingly innocent, and the examination of the often-fraught first year of college is superb. Owen is cued white. Zarmenus sometimes appears as a pale-skinned human and sometimes as a towering, fiery-red, winged creature.
Delightfully messy. (Romance. 15-18)Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781250887788
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
A slasher flick spliced with Crime and Punishment, this engrossing debut novel asks complex philosophical questions in a...
An adolescent, yet Nietzschean, examination of humanity and horror.
Nita is a monster. Literally. She can heal her own wounds and even block her pain receptors. But she and her mother also deal in monsters, species regulated by the International Non-Human Police, selling their body parts on the black market. Her ghoulish mother hunts and kills, while Nita dissects them with a meditative grace, trying to think of herself as innocent. But when Nita’s conscience inconveniently prevents her from vivisecting a live specimen, she’s kidnapped and taken to the Amazon, caged by people in the same business. Menaced by a zannie (creatures that feed off physical pain) and a ruthless woman, Nita, who is mixed species (with a brown-skinned human father and a nonhuman mother), has to figure out how to escape and whether she has any morals to live by. The vivid setting, Mercado de la Muerte (one of several Death Markets worldwide) in a sweltering South American jungle populated by buyers, sellers, and sold, is matched by a zipping plot interspersed with deliciously horrifying and gory scenes of dismemberment and destruction. Equally intriguing is the constant musing on what makes a monster, how people respond to trauma and control, and how one’s choices affirm or deny one’s own humanity.
A slasher flick spliced with Crime and Punishment, this engrossing debut novel asks complex philosophical questions in a pleasingly hard-to-stomach way. (Fantasy. 15-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-86354-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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