by Indigo Cox ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2018
An ambitious but lightweight fantasy that grapples with issues of racism and identity.
Cox’s (Native Girl Rites, 2017) brief fantasy novel tells the story of a magical young woman locked in an eternal war against the forces of hate.
In New York City in 1972, 20-something African-American student Misty is attending the Girard music school, taking part in its doctoral program. But she has a unique ability that only her mother and uncle know about: When she strums her old blue guitar, she’s able to change her outward appearance from that of a black woman to a white one. This comes in handy at a school where racism remains rampant, particularly in the classroom of intolerant Professor Krinch. At night, she has dreams in which she transforms into a magical beast to do battle with a shape-shifting demon, Schizm, the incarnation of hate. In her waking life, she begins a relationship with Justin, a white student who knows her as both Misty and as her white alter ego, “Cynthia Berns”—although he doesn’t realize that they’re the same person. As Misty’s dreams become more intense, she learns that the source of her powers is her purple blood—which is also evidence that she’s a demigod. While drawing on the help of other demigods that reveal themselves to her, she must use her powers to defeat Schizm before he can enslave the world. Cox writes in an energetic style that gives scenes a sense of lively urgency. For example, at one point, Misty dreams of taking the form of a giant wolf: “Before devouring her prey, she leaped to catch the other buck who had gotten a huge head start already….Two swift leaps and she was on his tail….She reached out with her large paw and slashed him in two.” The choice to combine elements of fantasy and with the topic of American racial dynamics in the ’70s is an intriguing one, and the overall premise does hold a lot of promise. However, the novel also relies heavily on familiar genre tropes, such as Misty’s status as “the chosen one,” and convenient occurrences that may strain readers’ credulity.
An ambitious but lightweight fantasy that grapples with issues of racism and identity.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 219
Publisher: Kwill
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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