Magic and music blend in this gender-flipped fantasy take on The Phantom of the Opera.
Seventeen-year-old Isda lives and lurks in the shadows, catwalks, and crypts of the Channe Opera House of Vaureille. Discarded at birth and raised in secret by the calculating Cyril Bardin, Isda helps her adoptive father and the opera by manipulating audience members’ memories through her forbidden gravoir magic. Unlike the indentured fendoirs who legally extract memories as an elixir—sometimes leaving the poor as Memoryless husks—all gravoirs are supposed to be executed at birth, a legacy of the bloody and brief revolution led by three much-mythologized gravoir women, Les Trois. Redheaded Isda has facial disfigurements like all gravoirs and fendoirs, hidden beneath masks that they are forced to wear in public; Isda has adorned hers with sparkling crystals and raven feathers. But the songs of Emeric Rodin, a newly arrived and lowly cleaning boy, stir Isda’s magic and interest, and she begins to tutor him while also fearing addiction to the memories she takes from him. Singing, masquerades, organ music, and chandeliers ensue, elements as indebted to Andrew Lloyd Webber as Gaston Leroux. With Isda, debut author Olson offers a complex and nuanced character who both suffers persecution and commits monstrous acts, pitting typical teenage insecurities against mind-altering powers. Most characters read as White.
A well-choreographed, updated take on a melodramatic classic. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-335-14794-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
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Adolescent criminals seek the haul of a lifetime in a fantasyland at the beginning of its industrial age.
The dangerous city of Ketterdam is governed by the Merchant Council, but in reality, large sectors of the city are given over to gangs who run the gambling dens and brothels. The underworld's rising star is 17-year-old Kaz Brekker, known as Dirtyhands for his brutal amorality. Kaz walks with chronic pain from an old injury, but that doesn't stop him from utterly destroying any rivals. When a councilman offers him an unimaginable reward to rescue a kidnapped foreign chemist—30 million kruge!—Kaz knows just the team he needs to assemble. There's Inej, an itinerant acrobat captured by slavers and sold to a brothel, now a spy for Kaz; the Grisha Nina, with the magical ability to calm and heal; Matthias the zealot, hunter of Grishas and caught in a hopeless spiral of love and vengeance with Nina; Wylan, the privileged boy with an engineer's skills; and Jesper, a sharpshooter who keeps flirting with Wylan. Bardugo broadens the universe she created in the Grisha Trilogy, sending her protagonists around countries that resemble post-Renaissance northern Europe, where technology develops in concert with the magic that's both coveted and despised. It’s a highly successful venture, leaving enough open questions to cause readers to eagerly await Volume 2.
Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell into a family . (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62779-212-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning.
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Two teens train to be society-sanctioned killers in an otherwise immortal world.
On post-mortal Earth, humans live long (if not particularly passionate) lives without fear of disease, aging, or accidents. Operating independently of the governing AI (called the Thunderhead since it evolved from the cloud), scythes rely on 10 commandments, quotas, and their own moral codes to glean the population. After challenging Hon. Scythe Faraday, 16-year-olds Rowan Damisch and Citra Terranova reluctantly become his apprentices. Subjected to killcraft training, exposed to numerous executions, and discouraged from becoming allies or lovers, the two find themselves engaged in a fatal competition but equally determined to fight corruption and cruelty. The vivid and often violent action unfolds slowly, anchored in complex worldbuilding and propelled by political machinations and existential musings. Scythes’ journal entries accompany Rowan’s and Citra’s dual and dueling narratives, revealing both personal struggles and societal problems. The futuristic post–2042 MidMerican world is both dystopia and utopia, free of fear, unexpected death, and blatant racism—multiracial main characters discuss their diverse ethnic percentages rather than purity—but also lacking creativity, emotion, and purpose. Elegant and elegiac, brooding but imbued with gallows humor, Shusterman’s dark tale thrusts realistic, likable teens into a surreal situation and raises deep philosophic questions.
A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning. (Science fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4424-7242-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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