Despite its heavy-handed titular metaphor, this novel succeeds in injecting fun and adventure into the psychology of...
In Calicchia’s debut YA fantasy novel, two sisters fight to destroy a powerful dark angel with the ability to taint humans’ views of themselves.
Despite her spirited disposition and kung fu know-how, 17-year-old Cailyssa Larkin doesn’t like the person she sees in the mirror—and she’s destroyed several mirrors because of it. She has three good friends and a plucky younger sister, Terry, who all attend the same high school she does, but otherwise, Cailyssa is an outsider there. One day, while she and her friends are at the mall, Cailyssa spots Daemon, her sullen, gothic heartthrob, sitting alone at a food-court table. Daemon invites her to meet him later at her peculiar Uncle Spencer’s mirror-filled house, a location forbidden by her parents. She manages to leave home that evening on the pretext of going to the mall, but her parents force her to bring Terry along. When the sisters arrive at the house, they find Daemon curiously dressed in medieval garb. In the largest of the mirrors, Uncle Spencer unveils a terrifying vision to Cailyssa: an apocalyptic near-future world ruled by hatred and self-loathing. Using the same mirror as a portal, Cailyssa enters Mirror World, a Tolkien-esque realm under the pall of fallen angel Lord Speculus, who can influence what people see when they look at themselves in mirrors. After an attack from the dark lord, Cailyssa convenes with Terry, Daemon, and Uncle Spencer at the Larkin family castle, where she discovers supernatural abilities and a surprising family history. In the safety of the castle, she begins to plot a strategy to destroy Speculus and keep him from spreading his terror to Earth. Cailyssa’s spunky narration is winning enough to freshen up this novel’s familiar fantasy and YA genre trappings despite its occasional shifts from first- to third-person. The final battle’s sustained, palpable peril also staves off predictability. However, Daemon fares poorly as a love interest due in part to his clunky, chauvinistic, antiquated-sounding diction (“I was angry because I was disgusted with your behavior. You were acting like a traipse!”). His depiction appropriates some of the eerier aspects of Twilight’s Edward Cullen—Daemon watches Cailyssa while she sleeps, for example—which may make it hard for some readers to root for the inevitable romance.
Despite its heavy-handed titular metaphor, this novel succeeds in injecting fun and adventure into the psychology of self-perception.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9861020-0-4
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Psychangel Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.
A novel tells the story of two spirited girls who set out to save a lame foal in 1952.
Mary, age 12, lacks muscle control of her legs and must use a wheelchair. Her life is constantly interrupted by trips with her widower father to assorted doctors, all of whom have failed to help her. Mary tolerates the treatments, hoping to one day walk unassisted, but her true passion involves horses. Possessing a library filled with horse books, she loves watching and drawing the animals at a neighboring farm. She longs to own one herself. But her father, overprotective due to her disability and his own lingering grief over Mary’s dead mother, makes her keep her distance. Mary befriends Laura, the emotionally neglected daughter of the wealthy neighboring farm owners, and the two share secret buggy rides. Both girls are attracted to Illusion, a beautiful red bay filly on the farm. Mary learns that Illusion is to be put down by a veterinarian because of a lame leg. Horrified, she decides to talk to the barn manager about the horse (“Isn’t it okay for her to live even if she’s not perfect? I think she deserves a chance”). Soon, Mary and Laura attempt to raise money to save Illusion. At the same time, Mary begins to gain control of her legs thanks to water therapy and secret therapeutic riding with Laura. There is indeed a great deal of poignancy in a story of a girl with a disability fighting to defend the intrinsic value of a lame animal. But this book, the first installment of the Dream Horse Adventure Series, would be twice as touching if Mary interacted with Illusion more. In the tale’s opening, she watches the foal from afar, but she actually spends very little time with the filly she tries so hard to protect. This turns out to be a strange development given the degree to which the narrative relies on her devotion. Count (Selah’s Sweet Dream, 2015) draws Mary and Laura in broad but believable strokes, defined mainly by their unrelenting pluckiness in the face of adversity. While the work tackles disability, death, and grief, Mary’s and Laura’s environments are so idyllic and their optimism and perseverance so remarkable that the story retains an aura of uncomplicated gentleness throughout.
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hastings Creations Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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