Don your leathers and get riding this (sub)urban fantasy.
Motorcycle gangs and magical powers: two great concepts that go unexpectedly well together.
In Rush’s version of the world, the kindled—those with magical powers—live among, but slightly separate from, the drecks, or ordinary humans. Recently graduated 18-year-old Jemmie, biracial daughter of a powerful Carmichael (protective locant power, Scottish antecedents) and a weak Cabrera (merata, or invulnerability power, South American indigenous roots), has a synesthesialike ability to see and smell magic. As a result, she can’t cast or even spend too much time around magic without needing alcohol to dull the sensory overload. She’s also in love with powerful Crowe Medici, the attractive, white president of the Black Devils, and engaged in a dangerous flirtation with a member of a rival gang, the Deathstalkers. All this back story and mythology takes a while to get established, dragging out the first half with slightly too much first-person exposition, but the annual Kindled Festival brings plenty of plot in the form of secret powers, secret revenge plans, and lots of magical inter-gang fighting. What this lacks in finesse is largely mitigated by originality, leavened with many crowd-pleasing notes: a not-so-subtle message about power and responsibility, steamy romance, an interesting world, and a zinger of an ending that leaves open the possibility of more complex adventures to come.
Don your leathers and get riding this (sub)urban fantasy. (Fantasy. 13-18)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-39089-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
A spellbinding narrative of betrayal, redemption, and the enduring magic of maternal love.
A bewitching rendition of “Snow White” with bold Black women at its heart.
Sixteen-year-old Princess Eve, who’s called “the Queen’s fury” by the people of Queen’s Bridge, was born with magic into a destiny that’s filled with foreboding. She’s been groomed to fulfill her true purpose: to slay the Knight—“a myth made real. A monster”—who haunts and terrorizes the queendom. The Knight becomes Eve’s obsession; while she trains to harness her powers to one day kill the Knight, she collects stories about him and studies them for clues. This enigmatic figure offers wishes to desperate people at a perilous cost, twisting even the most carefully crafted desires to his advantage. After all, Queen Sanaa, one of Eve’s mothers, wished to have “the loveliest voice in all the land” so she could sing to her love, Queen Regina (Eve’s other mother), and Eve, too. The Knight transformed her into a nightingale. Eve and Mekhi, the son of landowner Sir Gregory who has his own reasons for loathing the Knight, attempt to track the monster down. But a shocking revelation leads to Eve’s going into hiding and the Knight’s resurgence. Eve must decide whether to emerge from the shadows and risk everything to end his hold over Queen’s Bridge once and for all. This vividly realized, page-turning reimagining of a beloved tale includes enticing secrets and a central journey with heartwarming highs and heartbreaking lows.
A spellbinding narrative of betrayal, redemption, and the enduring magic of maternal love. (Fantasy. 13-18)Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9781547609765
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hard-to-read story, hard-to-stop-reading writing.
A hardscrabble antihero’s coming out lands him in an off-the-grid conversion camp.
Connor Major of Ambrose, Illinois, has quite a mouth on him. But when it comes to the rite-of-passage revelation to his single, hardcore Christian mother that he’s gay, he can’t find his words. At the behest of his boyfriend, Ario, Connor begrudgingly comes out, which is where the book begins. His rocky relationship with his mother is disintegrating, his frustration with exuberantly out Ario grows, accusations of being the absentee father of his BFF’s baby boy haunt him, and he gets violently absconded to a Christian conversion camp in Costa Rica. And that’s all before the unraveling of a mystery, a murder, gunshots, physical violence, emotional abuse, heat, humidity, and hell on Earth happen in the span of a single day. This story points fingers at despicable zealots and applauds resilient queer kids. Connor’s physical and emotional inability to fully find comfort in being gay isn’t magically erased, acknowledging the difficulty of self-acceptance in the face of disapproving homophobes. Lord of the Flies–like survival skills, murder, and brutal violence (Tasers, spears, guns) fuel the story. And secret sex and romance underscore the lack of social liberty and self-acceptance but also support the optimistic hope of freedom. Connor is White, as is the majority of the cast; Ario is Muslim.
Hard-to-read story, hard-to-stop-reading writing. (Fiction 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63583-061-3
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Flux
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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