A rousing series opener enabled by an adorable cast and a superb trove of faerie folklore.
This YA fantasy, by two contributors to the Sound & Fury: Shakespeare Goes Punk (2015) short story anthology, features a teenager who doesn’t know that she’s secretly a faerie princess.
High schooler Megan O’Reilly lives with her mother in Seattle. She often wonders about her parents’ earlier lives as rock musicians and about the fact that her father left while she was a baby. She sets timers to remind her throughout the day to take pills for her ADHD, which causes her to furiously doodle. One day, while she’s studying math, her best friend, Lani Kahale, tries to discuss something important with her. Megan puts the conversation off and later finds a crow by her mailbox. Closer inspection reveals that butterfly wings seem to adorn the crow’s back—but they actually belong to a pixie named Ashling. The pixie and her feathered mount, named Count, secretly replaced some of Megan’s medication with vitamin C, making her more receptive to seeing the fae. Megan soon learns that Lani is half Menehune (a Hawaiian gnome) and that her own father, Ric O’Reilly, is the king of the faerie realm. With the additional help of a Satyress named Cassia and a Brownie named Kerr, Megan travels to the court of Queen Orlaith, who recruits her to find the missing Ric and go on a quest to help preserve the seasonal changes on Earth. Cook and Perkins begin this first book of the Fair Folk Chronicles series with steady fantasy beats that should appeal to fans of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and even older classics, such as T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (1958). The authors provide tight pacing and deft characterization as Megan and her companions—a group that eventually includes a time-lost knight named Justin—survive terrain filled with iron golems and other creatures. Cook and Perkins offer clever, clear fantasy logic; when the Sword of Light, for example, “falls out of use, whatever else happens to it, it always hides itself behind challenges, to make sure its next wielder is worthy of it.” Emotionally, the finale provides a gentle landing, leaving room for complexity to build in subsequent volumes.
A rousing series opener enabled by an adorable cast and a superb trove of faerie folklore.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5118-3444-5
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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