A rewarding, though brief, finale to the Peace Keeper trilogy.
In this final fantasy-series installment, Hugus (Plant Speech, 2011, etc.) brings another of her Children of the Earth into focus as a final battle against their elemental adversary approaches.
Katarina “Kaya” Contigas is a Peace Keeper, living in Chicago with her housemates, Lisbeth Moore and Thomas McCarthy. Each possesses a powerful gift from Mother Earth, with whom they communicate regularly, hoping to foil the machinations of the jealous, powerful Earth scion, Ashlinn. A restaurant chef by day, Kaya has the ability to heal wounds and sickness, and she does so frequently for neighborhood animals. When Shadeed Qureshi, a doctor living in southern Chile, contacts her via mail and telephone, she learns that her powers aren’t as secret as she’d like. Kaya agrees to join the attractive doctor in Chile as he combats a mystery ailment affecting people there, even as Lisbeth—who’s psychically sensitive to storms and earthquakes—suspects that Ashlinn is again manipulating humanity through global warming. In Chile, Kaya lives with Shadeed and goes with him to remote Andean villages to help the diseased. While assisting, however, she discovers that each healing forcefully drains her own vitality and requires her to rest. She and Shadeed inevitably grow closer, but a violent confrontation with Ashlinn threatens to break the bonds shared by all Children of the Earth. In this latest Peace Keeper adventure, Hugus fashions a narrative that’s unique to Kaya, just as she did for Tom and Lisbeth in the previous two novels. She captures the vibrant Chilean environs, such as when “a gorgeous display of brown earth and grey rock [is] defiantly visible through the white snow.” The system of Peace Keepers is explained clearly to refresh readers, who learn that they all have different levels of power, with Ashlinn, unfortunately, at the top of the pyramid. Although Shadeed is a perfectly irresistible catch, his and Kaya’s romance occurs organically, and they sound the depths of their relationship with questions such as, “Why are we who we are instead of someone else?” Readers may wish to see more of the villain, though, as Ashlinn truly doesn’t appear in earnest until the last act.
A rewarding, though brief, finale to the Peace Keeper trilogy.Pub Date: March 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4917-8836-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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