by J.M. Muller ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 29, 2016
This capable novel about a wondrous, secret world largely focuses on setting up its sequel.
In this debut YA fantasy, a teen discovers he’s connected to a hidden enclave of undead outcasts.
Sixteen-year-old Daniel Thatcher lives with his grandmother in Trestle, Oregon. Initially raised by drug-addicted parents, he hasn’t had the easiest life, and today he leaves the grocery store where he works to find one of his truck tires flat. As he repairs it, his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, Sarah, approaches, hoping to defend herself against accusations of cheating. She claims that she didn’t make out with another boy and that their classmate Candace wants to break them up. Unsympathetic, Daniel fixes his car and races home for a double-date with his friend Tony, Candace, and another girl named Claire. But Daniel arrives too late. Tony has taken Daniel’s cousin, Eric, with him instead. The next day, Daniel finds a note from Tony that says, “I need to get out of this stupid town and find myself.” On the back of the message are directions to the secluded, woodsy location where the date occurred. The situation grows stranger when Eric reveals to Daniel that the girls aren’t quite human and they killed Tony. Daniel, however, remains their primary target. In this work, Muller engages in some vigorous worldbuilding. Her hero eventually breaches the concealed world of Narivous, after befriending the gorgeous Fantasia. She’s one of the Velores, who have died only to be reborn with otherworldly appearances and powers (like healing, illusion casting, and manipulating ice). Fantasia tells Daniel that because of his brilliant yellow aura, he’s welcome in Narivous. But the realm’s ruler, Thorn, is a tyrant and allows nobody to leave. The best part of Muller’s narrative is her atmospheric prose, conveying the Pacific Northwest’s spookiness in descriptions like “It was odd how quickly daylight vanished. Limbs and trees blocked the sky, draping the forest in darkness.” Yet the story, which features a solid romance, introduces a large contingent of intriguing characters who have little to do. Thorn is a grand villainess in the Disney stepmother mold. Fantasia warns Daniel: “No one ever goes against Thorn. To do so is considered treason and is punishable by death.” But any dramatic payoff will have to wait for the next installment.
This capable novel about a wondrous, secret world largely focuses on setting up its sequel.Pub Date: July 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4835-7375-5
Page Count: 270
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Rebecca Yarros ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2023
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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