A good balance between dark action and emotional costs.
This installment deviates from The Last Apprentice's usual formula, following witch assassin Grimalkin instead of Spook's apprentice Thomas Ward after the events of Rage of the Fallen (2011).
The Fiend has been bound but not killed, so his servants seek to restore him. To prevent this, Grimalkin took his decapitated head with her—it must be reunited with the bound body for the Fiend to rise again. Narrated by Grimalkin rather than presented as Tom's writing, the story is in present tense. The immediacy ratchets up tension as increasing numbers of powerful dark servants pursue Grimalkin. Although the legendary witch assassin is among the best killers to ever have lived, she is endangered by a kretch, a she-wolf/demon hybrid created by dark-magic users specifically to kill her. Forced to seek help, stubbornly self-reliant Grimalkin leaves a path of violent devastation among her allies wherever she goes, making painful sacrifices to thwart the Fiend while Tom seeks ways to kill him. The narration and short, free-verse poems at the beginning of each chapter give a complex look into Grimalkin's peculiar thought processes, and her history is unveiled through the personal stories her protégé enjoys hearing time and again. While her voice differs greatly from the familiar Tom's, the closer look makes her all the more intriguing.
A good balance between dark action and emotional costs. (Fantasy. 11-15)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-208207-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
IN THE NEWS
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end.
Riggs spins a gothic tale of strangely gifted children and the monsters that pursue them from a set of eerie, old trick photographs.
The brutal murder of his grandfather and a glimpse of a man with a mouth full of tentacles prompts months of nightmares and psychotherapy for 15-year-old Jacob, followed by a visit to a remote Welsh island where, his grandfather had always claimed, there lived children who could fly, lift boulders and display like weird abilities. The stories turn out to be true—but Jacob discovers that he has unwittingly exposed the sheltered “peculiar spirits” (of which he turns out to be one) and their werefalcon protector to a murderous hollowgast and its shape-changing servant wight. The interspersed photographs—gathered at flea markets and from collectors—nearly all seem to have been created in the late 19th or early 20th centuries and generally feature stone-faced figures, mostly children, in inscrutable costumes and situations. They are seen floating in the air, posing with a disreputable-looking Santa, covered in bees, dressed in rags and kneeling on a bomb, among other surreal images. Though Jacob’s overdeveloped back story gives the tale a slow start, the pictures add an eldritch element from the early going, and along with creepy bad guys, the author tucks in suspenseful chases and splashes of gore as he goes. He also whirls a major storm, flying bullets and a time loop into a wild climax that leaves Jacob poised for the sequel.
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end. (Horror/fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59474-476-1
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Sanderson (Legion, 2018, etc.) plainly had a ball with this nonstop, highflying opener, and readers will too.
Eager to prove herself, the daughter of a flier disgraced for cowardice hurls herself into fighter pilot training to join a losing war against aliens.
Plainly modeled as a cross between Katniss Everdeen and Conan the Barbarian (“I bathed in fires of destruction and reveled in the screams of the defeated. I didn’t get afraid”), Spensa “Spin” Nightshade leaves her previous occupation—spearing rats in the caverns of the colony planet Detritus for her widowed mother’s food stand—to wangle a coveted spot in the Defiant Defense Force’s flight school. Opportunities to exercise wild recklessness and growing skill begin at once, as the class is soon in the air, battling the mysterious Krell raiders who have driven people underground. Spensa, who is assumed white, interacts with reasonably diverse human classmates with varying ethnic markers. M-Bot, a damaged AI of unknown origin, develops into a comical sidekick: “Hello!...You have nearly died, and so I will say something to distract you from the serious, mind-numbing implications of your own mortality! I hate your shoes.” Meanwhile, hints that all is not as it seems, either with the official story about her father or the whole Krell war in general, lead to startling revelations and stakes-raising implications by the end. Stay tuned. Maps and illustrations not seen.
Sanderson (Legion, 2018, etc.) plainly had a ball with this nonstop, highflying opener, and readers will too. (Science fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-55577-0
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
SEEN & HEARD
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