This whip-smart fantasy offers ’90s nostalgia and an irresistible underdog hero.
A teen orphan grapples with self-doubts and demons in this YA urban fantasy.
In Chicago, 15-year-old Jestin Kase has just burned down his foster home. His greedy foster father, who died in the fire, had been collecting children in a cramped basement for the checks they brought in. But he was also a demonic thrall. Jestin helped his fellow orphans escape and now hides in an alley from the authorities. He befriends a cat that he names Growly McHissy-Face and encounters Gideon, a man dressed like a leather-clad hero from a late-1990s action film. After Gideon dispatches demonic cops with magic bullets, he takes Jestin to a church to meet Father Caleb. There, the teen learns about Dragon Metal, medallions that bond with their hosts and confer elemental powers. Further, these magical Relics operate outside the ordered system established by the Three Great Schools of Magic. Because Jestin refuses “to accept the world we live in as normal,” Gideon recruits him for the epic battle against the cosmic threat Tiamat, an entity from Babylonian myth that works toward bringing about the Great Dark. Jestin will train with a team of superpowered teens that includes Jacob, Zadie, and Everett. As the mission grows more complex, Jestin wrestles with not being a “Chosen One” but a master of his own fate. White opens his fantasy series with complex worldbuilding and sizzling, widescreen action. The narrative is also imbued with self-aware snark, as when Jestin asks: “Do I need mettle to use the Metal medal?” His sarcasm hides intense qualms regarding his difficult training, as reflected in a journal entry that asks: “Why am I bothering to try?” Between battling creatures like scorpion men and superpowered villains, Jestin explores his attraction to Jacob, whose eyes are “a kaleidoscope of brilliance that made Jestin’s throat swell with anxious excitement.” The adventure sometimes feels episodic, as when Jestin and Jacob decide to infiltrate a Divinity School as new students. Yet even as the story becomes conceptually top-heavy, like Marvel’s comic book universe, it’s always fun. Plenty of questions remain for the sequel.
This whip-smart fantasy offers ’90s nostalgia and an irresistible underdog hero.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-98522-130-5
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Teer Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly...
In a radical departure from her realistic fiction and comic chronicles of Anastasia, Lowry creates a chilling, tightly controlled future society where all controversy, pain, and choice have been expunged, each childhood year has its privileges and responsibilities, and family members are selected for compatibility.
As Jonas approaches the "Ceremony of Twelve," he wonders what his adult "Assignment" will be. Father, a "Nurturer," cares for "newchildren"; Mother works in the "Department of Justice"; but Jonas's admitted talents suggest no particular calling. In the event, he is named "Receiver," to replace an Elder with a unique function: holding the community's memories—painful, troubling, or prone to lead (like love) to disorder; the Elder ("The Giver") now begins to transfer these memories to Jonas. The process is deeply disturbing; for the first time, Jonas learns about ordinary things like color, the sun, snow, and mountains, as well as love, war, and death: the ceremony known as "release" is revealed to be murder. Horrified, Jonas plots escape to "Elsewhere," a step he believes will return the memories to all the people, but his timing is upset by a decision to release a newchild he has come to love. Ill-equipped, Jonas sets out with the baby on a desperate journey whose enigmatic conclusion resonates with allegory: Jonas may be a Christ figure, but the contrasts here with Christian symbols are also intriguing.
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly provocative novel. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 978-0-395-64566-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes.
The Plague has left a population divided between Elites and Ordinaries—those who have powers and those who don’t; now, an Ordinary teen fights for her life.
Paedyn Gray witnessed the king kill her father five years ago, and she’s been thieving and sleeping rough ever since, all while faking Psychic abilities. When she inadvertently saves the life of Prince Kai, she becomes embroiled in the Purging Trials, a competition to commemorate the sickness that killed most of the kingdom’s Ordinaries. Kai’s duties as the future Enforcer include eradicating any remaining Ordinaries, and these Trials are his chance to prove that he’s internalized his brutal training. But Kai can’t help but find Pae’s blue eyes, silver hair, and unabashed attitude enchanting. She likewise struggles to resist his stormy gray eyes, dark hair, and rakish behavior, even as they’re pitted against each other in the Trials and by the king himself. Scenes and concepts that are strongly reminiscent of the Hunger Games fall flat: They aren’t bolstered by the original’s heart or worldbuilding logic that would have justified a few extreme story elements. Illogical leaps and inconsistent characterizations abound, with lighthearted romantic interludes juxtaposed against genocide, child abuse, and sadism. These elements, which are not sufficiently addressed, combined with the use of ableist language, cannot be erased by any amount of romantic banter. Main characters are cued white; the supporting cast has some brown-skinned characters.
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798987380406
Page Count: 538
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
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