An often engaging fantasy novel that could have used more background detail.
In the first volume of Flowers’ YA fantasy series, a high schooler enters a fantasy realm and finds out many secrets about her and her family’s past.
Sixteen-year-old Vivienne “Vivi” Reid feels lost, and at Oakland High, she fits in nowhere. When track star Max Green invites her to a party at the prominent Silver Lake Resort, where her dad drowned nine years ago,Vivi decides to attend and try to find out any information she can about her father’s demise. But at the party, Max assaults her while on a boat. She escapes and encounters a mysterious woman underwater; soon, Vivi washes up on Dragonrider Academy’s warm sands. There, she learns to ride a wyvern named Solstice and meets her rival, Jasmine, and an 18-year-old named Killian, who guides her at the academy; Vivi and Killian become romantically involved; Solstice and Killian’s beast, Topaz, are also bonded. It is at Dragonrider Academy that Vivi learns that both she and her mother hail from a place called Avalon and have the power of goddesses. As she adjusts to life at the academy with rivals, friends, and dragons, Vivi learns that she has a mission, and along the way, she finds out the truth about her father’s death. She also discovers that her allies may not always be who they seem. Presented over seven episodes, this volume begins with Vivi’s father’s death and follows her through Dragonrider Academy as she intuits each part of her calling and, with newfound friends, pursues her destiny. Flowers weaves in multiple aspects that teen readers will find relatable, as Vivi encounters romance, struggles with feelings of not belonging, and discovers her drive to achieve. Each of these, in turn, is presented in a rousing manner, often with elements of suspense. The parts set at Dragonrider Academy would have benefited from more extensive and detailed worldbuilding regarding the academy’s culture so that readers might be able to engage more with what naïve Vivi faces. Still, the work effectively hearkens back to ancient stories, integrating themes of feminine strength and romance.
An often engaging fantasy novel that could have used more background detail.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953393-05-0
Page Count: 524
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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