THE EVERLING AND THE ACID KING

In Christie’s YA fantasy novel, a teenage orphan must save the first real home he’s ever known from a deadly threat.

Chester “Chezzy” Nithercot, who was abandoned on the steps of an orphanage as a baby, has had bad luck finding an adoptive family. He thinks that his latest placement with the Fieldmores might change all that—but his new foster brother Stuart turns out to be a spiny monster, and Chezzy’s orphanage caretaker quickly removes Chezzy from the home. The orphan’s fortunes change with the arrival of professors Aris Kepler and Alexa Da Maxwell, who take him to Balefire, an underground school for mutants and scientific geniuses. Kepler informs Chezzy that he’s a rare “everling”: an immortal being who can’t be killed. The professor gives the teen a mission: to track the SIs, the holographic “projected people” who’ve been popping up around the school. Soon, Chezzy makes his first friends, who include scaredy-cat Stuart, renegade Fern, and Fair, who can change colors. It turns out that Chezzy’s assignment is part of Kepler’s master plan to stop the Acid King, who’s terrorizing Balefire (and who has a personal history with the professor). Chezzy and his crew become confident investigators, leading to a showdown that they may not survive. In their debut novel, Christie stirs up enjoyable comparisons to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters from Marvel’s X-Men comics. In this first volume, the author sets up the fictional world perfectly; it’s hard to go wrong with a character such as Stuart, a porcupine-like young man who’s afraid of his own shadow. In addition to a colorful cast, the book offers a textured backdrop in Balefire, with Chezzy ably serving as the reader’s guide. However, Christie is wise enough to leave plenty of room for exploring the setting and characters in future novels. The author also smartly does what few writers remember to do in series openers—resolving the main storyline while also hinting at the future, rather than leaving everything major plot points hanging. Overall, it’s an engaging introduction to a fantastical world.

An inventive first novel that’s enlivened by an appealing hero.