This second volume has up-to-the-minute appeal for gamers who like a byte of romance with their sci-fi.
Opening where Rush (2013) left off, this sequel sees Miki’s virtual, gaming life and her real life dangerously merge.
Miki and love interest Jackson both have a mix of alien and human DNA, and the inscrutable Committee intermittently pulls them without warning from their teen lives into a live-action, video game war against the alien Drau, who are bent on destroying humanity. Injury in the game can be agonizing, and death is final. Miki’s existence is hard enough, as she struggles with grief over her mother’s death and her father’s alcoholism. The adrenaline ramps up when the Drau find a way to push through the virtual boundaries and enter real time, infiltrating a dance at Miki’s high school and instigating a massive, calamitous battle. The lightning-quick shifts in reality are positively diabolical, as those she thought dead are discovered to be alive and those she thought on her side are revealed not to be. The story spends less time than did the predecessor in battle scenes with the gruesome Drau, exploring more deeply the growing relationship between Miki and Jackson. This episode ends on the edge, positioning readers for the leap into the next adventure.
This second volume has up-to-the-minute appeal for gamers who like a byte of romance with their sci-fi. (Adventure/romance. 13-18)Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-219221-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
A page-turner of a fantasy-horror debut from a promising new voice.
Something’s rotten in the province of Sussex.
Twelve families rule over the Smoke, a U.K.-inspired nation, where the citizens battle to maintain control against an encroaching fog that brings death and destruction in the form of monstrous Phantoms. When Silas Darling, Merrick’s father and Sussex’s Manor Lord, dies unexpectedly, Merrick must abandon her New London social season and return to her ancestral home, Norland House. Surrounded by her older sister, Essie (who’s set to inherit the title Merrick desires for herself), and cousins (who are concerned mostly with propriety), she struggles to find answers. When Sussex and the family’s seat are threatened by mysterious border breaches and attacks, Merrick enters into a tenuous alliance with sentry Killian Brandon to unravel a Gordian knot of family secrets. The measured pacing, combined with Merrick’s emotional arc, together create magnificent tension. The worldbuilding skews gothic, thanks to the creepy manor house and mist-infected landscapes that are befitting of a Brontë sisters novel—albeit with the addition of possessed corpses that consume human flesh. The gender politics of this world allow women to inherit titles and fight Phantoms, yet they have little agency to act on their own behalf without entering into advantageous, heteronormative marriages, an aspect of the fantasy world that readers may find confusing. Primary characters read white.
A page-turner of a fantasy-horror debut from a promising new voice. (guide to manors and ruling families) (Fantasy. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593572375
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce.
Houck kicks off a new story arc in the world of the Tiger’s Curse series with new tigers who live in a northerly setting.
The death of their widowed royal mother touches off a crisis in the Kievian Empire; neither Stacia nor Verusha Stepanov, 17-year-old sword-wielding twin sisters, wants to be named tsarina. But questions of succession get put on hold when a battle with a sorcerer inexplicably turns the two into nonspeaking Siberian tigers. Hints of a cure send them, along with a growing entourage of men to provide assistance (and, perforce, do all the talking), on a long trek. Though most of the cast sticks to genre type, Houck throws in a wild card in the form of hunky, inarticulate Nikolai, who joins the quest because he is enthralled by Verusha—and who also killed his whole family in an act of revenge. Occasional anachronistic dialogue (e.g., “Are you ready, ladies?”) disrupts the tale’s generally earnest tone, as do the clumsy attempts at banter. A third tiger, snarky and blind but conveniently able to see through others’ eyes, trots in late in the story. The events in this setup volume unfold with many a flashback and change in point of view and head toward no sort of resolution—only the cave-dwelling White Shaman of the Tundra’s advice that further journeys are in the offing. The central cast in this Russian-inspired fantasy world presents white; the Indigenous population includes nomadic reindeer herders.
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce. (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798212221696
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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