Plentiful action scenes, unflinching but never gratuitous violence, and a smoldering yet still-chaste romance should keep...
Politics and peril unfurl slowly in this old-fashioned sequel.
Eighteen-year-old former matchmaker’s assistant Sage Fowler now serves as a royal tutor and unauthorized spy, eager to protect Demora against its neighbors: hostile Kimisara and enigmatic Casmun. Tasked with training an elite unit and uncovering rogue Kimisar soldiers, 20-something Capt. Alexander Quinn takes the army to the borderlands, Sage and 14-year-old Prince Nicholas in tow. Haunted by his brother’s death, Alex keeps Sage at a distance, fearing that his love for her endangers everyone around him. When an attack forces the Demorans into an uneasy alliance with the isolated desert-dwelling Casmuni, Sage and Alex find their diplomatic skills, military experience, and even romance tested. While white Sage is dismayed by discrimination against darker-complexioned Alex, who had an Aristelan mother, her adventures rely heavily on stereotypical fantasy racial divisions pitting the pale Northerners (who read as European) against the darker Southerners (described as living in formerly nomadic, desert-based, slightly exoticized societies). Lacking lavish fantasy elements and heavily focused on politics and war, Beaty’s (Traitor’s Kiss, 2017) tale resembles a more YA-friendly Game of Thrones and recalls classic novels such as Tamora Pierce’s Alanna series and Robin McKinley’s Blue Sword.
Plentiful action scenes, unflinching but never gratuitous violence, and a smoldering yet still-chaste romance should keep readers’ appetites whetted for the third installment. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-14225-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Imprint
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning.
Two teens train to be society-sanctioned killers in an otherwise immortal world.
On post-mortal Earth, humans live long (if not particularly passionate) lives without fear of disease, aging, or accidents. Operating independently of the governing AI (called the Thunderhead since it evolved from the cloud), scythes rely on 10 commandments, quotas, and their own moral codes to glean the population. After challenging Hon. Scythe Faraday, 16-year-olds Rowan Damisch and Citra Terranova reluctantly become his apprentices. Subjected to killcraft training, exposed to numerous executions, and discouraged from becoming allies or lovers, the two find themselves engaged in a fatal competition but equally determined to fight corruption and cruelty. The vivid and often violent action unfolds slowly, anchored in complex worldbuilding and propelled by political machinations and existential musings. Scythes’ journal entries accompany Rowan’s and Citra’s dual and dueling narratives, revealing both personal struggles and societal problems. The futuristic post–2042 MidMerican world is both dystopia and utopia, free of fear, unexpected death, and blatant racism—multiracial main characters discuss their diverse ethnic percentages rather than purity—but also lacking creativity, emotion, and purpose. Elegant and elegiac, brooding but imbued with gallows humor, Shusterman’s dark tale thrusts realistic, likable teens into a surreal situation and raises deep philosophic questions.
A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning. (Science fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4424-7242-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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