A run-of-the-mill story in a beautifully drawn fantasy world.
An orphan discovers her royal roots in the first book of Oomerbhoy’s debut YA fantasy series.
Aurora Darlington is a 16-year-old orphan living with an extended family that seems to despise her existence. If there were a closet under the stairs, she’d be living in it. Aurora’s life is turned upside down when she finds herself kidnapped and transported to the magical kingdom of Avalonia—an alternate world in which Aurora is a princess. She’s also a mage and one of the fae. Unfortunately for Aurora, her claim to the family throne and her incredible powers make her an attractive target. The evil Queen Morgana is hunting Aurora, hoping to extinguish the last of the Firedrake dynasty. Aurora finds safe haven with her birth family, makes new friends, and encounters a host of mythical creatures to help. She also attends a school for magic, where she begins to get a handle on her power. As she learns more and more about her family and kingdom, Princess Aurora becomes determined to defeat Morgana and claim her crown. The mysterious Black Wolf is an added bonus, a handsome and mysterious outlaw who repeatedly comes to Aurora’s aid. Oomerbhoy’s fairy tale has a familiar feel: a damsel in distress, an evil villain, a handsome prince, and an assorted cast of magical beings. Some of the narrative components echo the classics; the Academy of Magic at Evolon could be Hogwarts, while the Shadow Guards are reminiscent of Tolkien’s Ring Wraiths or Rowling’s Dementors. Aurora can be a tepid heroine, uncomplicated in her internal dialogue and often slow on the uptake (she may be the only one surprised by her love interest’s true identity). Yet Oomerbhoy admirably creates her world, and the descriptions of villages and feasts are the novel’s best parts. At the library of Evolon, “wisteria had climbed the walls of the front façade, which was huge and imposing, and two additional wings led out at right angles towards the sea.” Even discouraged readers will want to wander inside.
A run-of-the-mill story in a beautifully drawn fantasy world.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940014-70-8
Page Count: 488
Publisher: Wise Ink Creative Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fun juvenile fiction with lively, precise narration and a strong tendency to allegory.
Whimsical quest fantasy.
Caught between the dependence of childhood–particularly the lack of a driver’s license–and the pubescent yearning for autonomy, 13-year-old Carrie faces another boring summer day at home. At her mother’s urging, she settles down in her father’s rock garden to tackle one of the remaining titles on her summer reading list, The Hobbit. Her reading is interrupted, however, when Earth momentarily scrapes Vale, a planet from another dimension. This improbable intergalactic event deposits Carrie on a world of talking birds, animals and insects, where her attention is immediately arrested by a shard of glowing amber that speaks to her, revealing itself to be Alma, a goddess trapped eons ago by Lucifer. To be freed, Alma needs Carrie to deliver the amberstone to Lobo, the Great Wolf Spirit, an appropriately Tolkienesque quest that Carrie readily takes up. Aided by a pill bug named Tilt and two youths from the near-utopian city of Safe Keep, Carrie faces natural disasters, ravenous predators and, most daunting of all, the prevailing view that the amberstone should be returned to Safe Keep rather than to Lobo. Finally, Carrie is forced to choose whether to listen to her instincts or to the voices of those who have helped her. Clearly an allegory about emerging from adolescence to find one’s moral compass, Carrie’s journey is dominated by two spiritual systems, one represented by the Guardians–ethereal, Miltonic angels who serve the Creator and guard Safe Keep–and the other embodied in Lobo, Alma and even the imps of Bleak Meadow. Lobo and Alma embody the intuitive and immanent portions of Carrie’s youthful identity, while the Guardians are the transcendent, superego of the adult world–how she chooses to balance these elements will say much about her path to maturity. Heavily influenced by Tolkien and Lewis Carroll, Lecoq’s promising debut is a lighthearted amusement powered by crisp and economic descriptive prose. The dialogue, unfortunately, rarely matches the quality of the narration, and this weakness dilutes the drama of Carrie’s adventures. Billed as young-adult fare, this would appeal more to an even younger audience.
Fun juvenile fiction with lively, precise narration and a strong tendency to allegory.Pub Date: July 2, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-3114-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A well-shaped piece of exotica, full of danger, dash, allegory and love under the banana tree.
A smart, vibrant adventure romance wrapped in a quest, fashioned to touch a wide audience.
The setting for this tale is India–the India of today, but also the India of yore and that of Western imagination, with its hot colors, heavenly scents and rich mythic history. Eighteen-year-old Kelsey Hayes finds herself in the subcontinent in the company of a circus tiger she was caring for back in Oregon. The tiger, named Dhiren, is also Alagan Dhiren, Prince of Mujulaain, commonly known as Ren–but that was back in 1657 AD, the year a curse was placed on him by Lokesh, a raja greedy for wealth and power whom Ren had thwarted. Kelsey can break the curse, and that quest takes the protagonists through challenges that would make Steven Spielberg proud. Houck has a mostly steady hand with the story’s pacing, purposeful and deliberate as she takes her time to unspool colorful nuggets of Indian history and flesh out each milieu–visiting, for instance, the butler’s pantry and spice room in Ren’s house, or the elephant’s stables and the king’s balance in the fabled city of Hampi. But she drags her feet when detailing Ren and his brother’s squabbles and takes forever to make even the most demure hay between Kelsey and Ren. Still, when she does it’s sweet fun–“I have no idea how long I was kissing him like this...My bare feet were dangling several inches from the floor.” Minor missteps–what is a GPS doing in a quest?–don’t seriously detract from the fun. Houck suffuses the book with the sheer otherness of India–monkey gods, battle elephants, caste relationships, the drape of a sari and the possibility of pure magic. Readers can’t throw a brick without hitting one shape-shifter or another in these pages. Houck conveys the mysteries with ease and clarity, drawing in readers, who’ll be glad for the wide-open ending.
A well-shaped piece of exotica, full of danger, dash, allegory and love under the banana tree.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-5043-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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