While the fantasy worldbuilding often goes heavy on magical argot, this series kickoff makes a decent foundation for...
After her archaeologist uncle and his associate are slain by mystery fiends, Boston teenager Norah goes on the run; she is both hunted and protected by more-than-human warriors in this young adult novel.
The best conceit of author Clark’s fair opening to a planned YA fantasy series sort of lurks in the background scenery and takes a while to catch the viewer’s attention: Imagine a modern world in which fantasylands such as Atlantis and Hyperborea (Conan the Barbarian’s realm) were accepted historical facts. Thus, in the present day, intrigue surrounds their lost relics and lingering power. Except Clark focuses on her own mythic MacGuffin, an Icelandic civilization from 280 million years ago called Cobbogoth. There, the natives possessed mystic-crystal technology and enhanced cell structures giving them long lives and superpowers, and a sort of werewolf-bat-demon species called Dogril lurked. Norah Luken, 17, is a chosen-one type living in modern-day New England. Her uncle Jack, an archaeologist, explored the Cobbogothian ruins, even making scientific history by unearthing a Dogril skeleton. When Jack is brutally slain and his closest colleague ends up likewise, stunned Norah becomes the cops’ prime suspect. With her photographic memory and fragments of knowledge that Jack had, in fact, met with real, live Cobbogothians and found the great subterranean Cobbogoth city, Norah careens from one mysterious guardian-type to another (“I’m one of the last three qualdrine-wielding Naridi,” explains one Nordic hunk). The action (some of which causes pretty ghastly wounds, but the good guys invariably bounce back via crystal EMT) gets further and further from the mundane, human world and into the Cobbogothian one; amid all the nomenclature, shape-shifting characters and teleportation into TARDIS-like environments (ones that are bigger on the inside than the outside), Norah has a tough time telling up from down and friend from foe. Readers may be equally confused, though appreciable thought has gone into the author’s dense system of “elementalist” magic and pantheon of gods and demigods, more so than the typical dragons/Vikings stew. Stylized illustrations and marginalia are handsome touches, resembling the art of illuminated manuscripts more so than comic-book literal renderings.
While the fantasy worldbuilding often goes heavy on magical argot, this series kickoff makes a decent foundation for forthcoming mystic crystal revelations.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463732318
Page Count: 336
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The well-paced romantic tension is a highlight of this enjoyable duology closer.
Even a war driven by gods can’t sever communication between journalist lovers Iris and Roman in this steampunk-adjacent romantic adventure.
A prologue sets the scene: Dacre, a god strummed to sleep by magic in Divine Rivals (2023), will not slumber forever. His willingness to wage war to acquire more powerful magic leads him to lay waste to entire towns, and Inkridden Tribune journalist Iris Winnow and war correspondent Roman Kitt can no longer be assured the other is safe—or even still alive. In Iris’ world of cigarette smoke, copper pipes, and driving goggles, colleagues affectionately call each other by their last names, watch each other’s backs, and face danger on the front lines. Though Underling Correspondent Roman is traveling with Dacre’s army, he questions why he was healed of his grievous wounds, while at the same time, he gradually recovers memories of Iris and recalls that she was special to him. Their magically connected typewriters allow for the rediscovery of their love and for communicating potentially deadly information about the invasion of Hawk Shire. The story primarily unfolds from Iris’ and Roman’s viewpoints, and while the prose occasionally uses well-worn phrases, Anglophiles will particularly enjoy the worldbuilding, and returning readers will welcome appearances from Capt. Keegan Torres; her wife, Marisol; and Dacre’s archnemesis—and wife—the goddess Enva. Main characters present white.
The well-paced romantic tension is a highlight of this enjoyable duology closer. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250857453
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Truly fantastic.
This dark fantasy duology opener has a magic school, a death, and five students who find themselves stranded in the wilderness.
Ren Monroe is a promising student wizard at Balmerick, a private school in the city of Kathor. Along with her best friend, Timmons, Ren is one of the few welfare students attending on a scholarship, and despite being one of the most accomplished people at the school, finding a placement in one of the top houses is proving difficult and is a hurdle in the way of the secret mission Ren has set out to accomplish. When a portal spell goes awry and Ren, Timmons, and four other students from different walks of life are thrown together into the Dires, an uncharted land where the last dragons lived, one of them ends up dead and the rest need to learn to work together to make their way back home before they succumb to the harsh environment or the terrifying revenant following them. This may well be the chance Ren was looking for to prove her worth. Placing elements of a locked-room mystery and an original magic system within the familiar trappings of a school for magic, this is a no-holds-barred tale of revenge, atonement, and the pursuit of justice set in a world diverse in skin color and social classes. Ren is a protagonist for the ages: equal parts smart, calculating, and ruthless, forming a lethal package as an avenging angel.
Truly fantastic. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-66591-868-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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