A challenging exploration of otherness and self-belief.
An ostracized girl and an abused boy look for acceptance and survival in an eschatological fantasy from Brown (Orphan Dreamer and the Missing Arrowhead, 2019, etc.).
Eleven-year-old Daniela Rose “Danny Rose” Cavanaugh lives in Florida and is an “Einstein-level genius.” Her dad believes she’s the next Messiah—his “Orphan Dreamer,” destined to save the world—but Danny is miserable. Being of mixed race, she is bullied for not being “black” enough. Her one friend, Ethan, is dying of cancer. Animals talk to her. She hears voices in her head and suffers from nosebleeds. Worst of all, a boy with no eyes haunts her dreams: “oily boy,” whose pain she feels as her own. He is 12-year-old Cillian Finn, who lives in Ireland. A child of rape, he is hated by his own mother. He is the object of beatings (and worse) and is snatched away from anyone who offers him kindness. Branded “Leviathan”—the Antichrist—Cillian is abused and despised, with his only respite coming when Daniela prays for him and sends him an angel. But Danny Rose has her own problems. Now 13 years old, she has been given a diamond, and it has transformed into a snowflake tattoo on her palm. Through this, she and Ethan travel out of their bodies to the biblical town of Gibeah in the year 1018 B.C.E. When they return, Ethan dies. Danny thinks it’s her fault. Self-harm lands her in the hospital, where she is diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, depressive type, and to save Cillian, first she must understand and accept herself. Brown has crafted a dense and rather abstruse novel, tackling themes of belonging and deprivation within a sprawling nonlinear narrative. The second episode in a series, it lacks closure and the solid pacing of a self-contained story. The dialogue, however, resonates strongly; and though the book is not tightly focused, Brown has steeped its pages in a religiosity and portent that add weight to the difficult subject matter. Danny Rose and Cillian lead deeply unhappy lives. Their childhoods make for an uncomfortable telling, but they stick in the mind. For these two characters alone, readers may take a leap of faith.
A challenging exploration of otherness and self-belief.Pub Date: June 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-942849-05-6
Page Count: 427
Publisher: Rogue Reads, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A superbly written tale filled with realistic, engaging, and quirky characters.
In Kaye’s (Iron Maidens, 2005) YA novel, a teenage girl runs away from her Northern California logger family and sets out on an odyssey that places her at the heart of the anti-logging community.
Jade Reynolds is fond of making up names for people in her life, such as “Driver Man,” “Apron Lady,” “Veroni-witch,” or “Yummy J.” She also refers to the “Here It Comes,” her cherished dreamlike state that’s somehow connected to trees (“Hyperspace daydreaming with a full-body peace that floods every cell”) and provides her with insights and small truths. She sets out on her journey after her uncle violently confronts an anti-logging protester, and, after catching a ride north, she ends up in Portland, Oregon, where her connection to nature blossoms as she attempts to follow in the footsteps of the “Garden Lady,” a guerrilla horticulturalist who secretly brightens the streets by planting flowers in the dead of night. It’s also revealed that a friend she calls “Peter,” from whom she’s gleaned much of her innate wisdom, is actually a tree in a “Family Circle” of redwoods near her home. While in Portland, she develops a crush on a dreamy guy named Justin (aka “Yummy J”), who convinces her to go to what he terms a “camp-tree thing.” This event turns out to be a tree-sitting protest in her hometown. In brilliantly onomatopoeic prose, Kaye shows how Jade comes to several epiphanies about her tree dreams while also coming to know the people that her family considers enemies. Throughout, the author relates the protagonist’s tale of redemption in delightfully sparse language, like a long poem in which small details matter, every word counts, and images are so cogent that they anchor readers in the fictive reality like tree roots: “Smoke comes out of his mouth in puffs with each word.”
A superbly written tale filled with realistic, engaging, and quirky characters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-943006-46-5
Page Count: 195
Publisher: Spark Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Despite an inconsistent narrative style, an entertaining and imaginative fantasy inspired by Shakespeare’s plays.
A bizarre object transports a teenager from the late 19th century to a world of Shakespearean magic and mystery in this debut YA novel.
Guided by a clue left by her grandmother, 14-year-old Alda finds a small, bubblelike object that shockingly transfers her from her 19th-century cottage to a pirate ship at sea. Her sudden appearance startles cabin boy Dreng, whom she will meet again in this Shakespearean fantasy that is woven from an atmospheric patchwork of elements from Hamlet (the Danish prince has a cameo as a prisoner on the pirate ship), Macbeth, and, especially, The Tempest. During an encounter with three bony, cackling figures on a fog-shrouded moor, Alda learns that the magical item that has brought her there is called a “cauldron’s bubble” (and that her grandmother may have been a member of this “wayward and weird” witches’ coven). Time shifts as Alda’s multiple strange journeys take her back to her own childhood, to a talking raven in a desolate desert canyon, to Dreng’s storm-tossed ship, and to a “between worlds” place called Netherfeld, where she ages two years with only gradually surfacing memories of what happens there. Thanks to witchy trickery, Alda ends up trapped on the haunted island where the lethal spirits are controlled by Prospero’s enslaved Ariel (depicted as a harpy of mythology). There, Alda’s fate becomes cleverly intertwined with naiads and dryads, a shipwrecked and now grown-up Dreng (who meets the ghost of his murdered father), the malformed and hapless Caliban, and a disturbingly proactive Miranda. Elby intermittently sustains a Bard-like sensibility in this overloaded but inventive story through an informed sprinkling of paraphrased and near quotes from Shakespeare’s plays, occasional puns, brief soliloquies, portentous scenes, and blank verse rhythms. (The witches: “Who is the girl?” / “Not who, what?”/ “A bearer?”/ “A sister?” / “A knower or a seer?”) The ending of this enjoyable tale, the first installment of a trilogy, skillfully telegraphs more mystery and adventures to come. In the upcoming Book 2 (Double, Double Toil), Alda’s odyssey of self-discovery will continue (along with Elby’s mining of further Shakespeare classics).
Despite an inconsistent narrative style, an entertaining and imaginative fantasy inspired by Shakespeare’s plays.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-974404-70-4
Page Count: 195
Publisher: Verdopolis Press
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
