An engaging series installment that points fantasy fans to grander action ahead.
This third volume of a YA series finds a sinister king growing more dangerous and a teenager who can track the fae torn in her allegiances.
Elise Thompson has the Sight. She’s always been able to detect the hidden feathers, pointy ears, or other characteristics of fae beings roaming the Mortal Realm. While working in the academic advising office on a college campus, she meets freshman Alexis Dearborn, a Halfling (half fae, half mortal) whose snake tattoo moves. When Elise compliments her body art, Alexis says, “I don’t have any tattoos.” Elise is used to her strange gift and doesn’t press the issue. She’s focused on her upcoming trip to Paris. The fae are allergic to iron and love older cities built mostly from stone. When she reaches Paris, she sees that her tour guide, Tommy, is an elf. He reports back to Sirius, leader of the elves, in Tír na nÓg (the Faery Realm) about the girl who can see past his glamour. The elves realize Elise could tip the scales in battling the Wild King, who’s collected an army of Solitary fae, each of whom has drifted from the civilized Courts and mutated. This pestiferous contingent has been hunting down Halflings and pressing them into service with wild magic. Battles in the Mortal streets for innocents are inevitable. In this latest installment of the Faery Realms series, Ridge (Divided Worlds, 2018, etc.) continues to skillfully blend action, mythology, and YA romance. Aside from numerous elves, the cast is a truly eclectic one—Elise is half Japanese and her best friend, Naomi, is an African-American with the skin condition vitiligo. Meanwhile, Finch, a female elf smitten with Elise, proves perpetually naive of the Mortal Realm and provides comedy relief. The bond among these girls is sweet, and would deftly carry the fantasy narrative minus the grisly Solitary fae (a mutated elf has mismatched eyes, “one a deep, solid red, the other a bulging, oozing yellow”). The author pushes her protagonists slowly but steadily toward a massive confrontation with the Wild King, which should be the central action in the next volume.
An engaging series installment that points fantasy fans to grander action ahead.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-359-23696-1
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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