An impressive and confident tale of two women finding love in a realm of shape-shifters.
In this fantasy debut, two shape-shifters form a bond that may change their world.
As Noon’s sprawling novel opens, readers find a mysterious woman named Aurora skulking through a mine that’s crawling with poisonous spiders. She’s hunting for valuable ethian crystals when she’s brought up short by the last thing she expects to encounter in such a dark, forbidding place: a beautiful song. Tracing the tune to its source, Aurora is enraged to find a cutter’s den: “A place of unimaginable horror, where shapeshifters were imprisoned while their bodies were systematically harvested for the high price their parts fetched on the black market.” Aurora lives in Nordarra, a region populated by many different, scattered clans of shape-shifters—mer-people, tiger-shifters, wolf-shifters, and avians, who can grow enormous wings out of their backs. These beings are presumably the descendants of the folks who came to Nordarra from the human world and were taught magic that allowed them to transform into shape-shifters. (Another theory is that those first human visitors were the servants of Nordarra’s original inhabitants and interbred with them.) In this realm, avians are frequently characterized as untrustworthy. It gives Aurora pause to discover that the song in the mine comes from a captive avian named Evie, but the two form a wary partnership. In exchange for Aurora’s dealing with the mine’s guards, Evie will fly them both to freedom. When Evie is injured and rendered temporarily flightless during their escape, the two are thrown into a close, earthbound struggle to survive—and to fulfill Aurora’s primal vow to track down all the parts of her father’s tiger form that were harvested by cutters years ago.
Noon handles the gradual unfolding of the story’s plots and subplots with a remarkably sure hand. Virtually none of debut novelists’ typical mistakes—clunky dialogue, incomplete concepts, and especially great blocks of undigested exposition—crop up in this book’s 500-plus pages. The political interplay of Nordarra’s various clans and factions is intelligently rendered as a backdrop for the tale’s central, most touching thread: Aurora’s and Evie’s (in reality, Evangeline Aquilar, oldest child of a powerful avian leader) gradually easing their personal and cultural barriers as their necessity-born friendship deepens into something more. The author has a straightforward, unadorned way of showing her characters clearly to readers, and it’s genuinely involving to watch Aurora overcome the lessons of her traumatic childhood in order to feel tender emotions again. The two women’s ongoing discovery of each other’s attributes is the story’s highlight. “You’re quite extraordinary and a little scary,” Aurora tells Evie at one point. “You’re like a kitten that looks all sweet and cuddly but you have sharp claws. Remind me never to cross you.” There are stretches in the narrative where Noon’s vivid personal revelation scenes almost overshadow the other pieces of the multifaceted plot structure, but these episodes are infrequent. The various levels of drama are usually kept in a balance that’s expertly maintained right through to the exciting (albeit, predictable) climactic scenes. The world of Nordarra—and the mechanics and psychology of shape-shifting—is drawn with an appealing intricacy that will make readers hope to return to this setting in future novels.
An impressive and confident tale of two women finding love in a realm of shape-shifters.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-473-50513-4
Page Count: 543
Publisher: Bluefire Books Ltd.
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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