An absorbing and powerful story showing the pointlessness of war.
A boy searches for his sister near the end of the Trojan War.
Eleven-year-old Hani wonders if he is the last person on Earth. His family and neighbors have recently disappeared, either killed or dragged away to serve in the war. For as long as Hani has lived, war has raged. Now alone, he survives by killing and roasting frogs. A gentle soul, he doesn’t like killing harmless creatures, but he needs to eat. He feels a special bond with his 6-year-old sister, Arinna, and they share a secret language. Arinna used to sing them both to sleep with songs that she’d heard from the gods, the songs that would protect children from danger, and now she is gone. He sets out on a journey to find her and bring her home. He believes he is not brave, so his mission calls for “loyalty and pluck.” While the setting is not explicitly named, the details—such as bronze daggers, cubit measurements, and the remnants of a wooden horse—firmly situate the tale in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Hani travels with his loyal donkey, Ansa, a source of comfort and wisdom. He does wonder if the thousand or more gods on Mount Hazzi are real; if they were, “why would they destroy the world, then choose him, Hani, the most ignorant person alive, to be the only survivor?” He comes to a burned-out city with its “twisty tangle of human corpses,” almost every one of them an old person. This war has been explained to him his whole life, but he still knows nothing. However, he believes in fate, which even the gods are powerless to stop. His own fate is to search for Arinna. Meanwhile, the first sign he sees of life is a dying soldier who opens his eyes. Is he an invader from across the seas, or is he a defender? Hani doesn’t know, but he has three choices: He can kill the man, walk away and let him die, or try to slake the poor man’s thirst. His decision guides the rest of the plot in this remarkable post-Iliad adventure. Although admittedly ignorant, Hani wisely muses that “love is what holds the world together; even a child knows it, a donkey knows it, a trapped frog knows it.” And perhaps more ominously, “Maybe peace is just war taking a rest.” But he loves “when the first stars appear, rising freshly washed and sparkling from the sea.”
An absorbing and powerful story showing the pointlessness of war.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316581233
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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