The granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor finds herself transported back in time to East Berlin circa 1988 in this time-travel mystery debut.
Ellie Baum is on a school trip to Berlin in the present day when she reaches out for a passing balloon and finds herself inexplicably transported to the same place in a different time, 18 months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Disoriented, she has no choice but to trust the first people she encounters—two teenage outcasts, Kai and Mitzi—who are agents of an underground group that wields magic and science to rescue people from East Berlin using bespelled red balloons. Ellie’s presence confounds even the balloon makers, especially since no one knows how to send her back to her own time. As Kai and Ellie investigate this question, growing closer in the process, the dead bodies of other, failed time travelers start piling up and complicating the mystery. Chapters of Ellie’s story in 1988 East Berlin are interspersed throughout with the story of her grandfather’s miraculous escape from Chelmno, a concentration camp in Poland, in 1942, a narrative that eventually converges with Ellie’s own. Kai is Romani, Ellie is Jewish, and Mitzi is gay, identities that lend deeper significance to this gripping story of disparate facets of European history.
An absorbing blend of historical fiction, mystery, and magical realism. (author’s note) (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8075-2933-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Categories: TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This hefty sequel to Six of Crows (2015) brings high-tension conclusions to the many intertwined intrigues of Ketterdam.
It's time for revenge—has been ever since old-before-his-time crook Kaz and his friends were double-crossed by the merchant princes of Ketterdam, an early-industrial Amsterdam-like fantasy city filled to the brim with crime and corruption. Disabled, infuriated, and perpetually scheming Kaz, the light-skinned teen mastermind, coordinates the efforts to rescue Inej. Though Kaz is loath to admit weakness, Inej is his, for he can't bear any harm come to the knife-wielding, brown-skinned Suli acrobat. Their team is rounded out by Wylan, a light-skinned chemist and musician whose merchant father tried to have him murdered and who can't read due to a print disability; Wylan's brown-skinned biracial boyfriend, Jesper, a flirtatious gambler with ADHD; Nina, the pale brunette Grisha witch and recovering addict from Russia-like Ravka; Matthias, Nina's national enemy and great love, a big, white, blond drüskelle warrior from the cold northern lands; and Kuwei, the rescued Shu boy everyone wants to kidnap. Can these kids rescue everyone who needs rescuing in Ketterdam's vile political swamp? This is dark and violent—one notable scene features a parade of teens armed with revolvers, rifles, pistols, explosives, and flash bombs—but gut-wrenchingly genuine. Astonishingly, Bardugo keeps all these balls in the air over the 500-plus pages of narrative.
How can such a hefty tome be un-put-down-able excitement from beginning to end? (glossary) (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-213-4
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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When a cyclone deposits a 21st-century Kansas teen in Oz, she and readers discover there’ve been some changes made.
Dirt-poor “Salvation Amy” Gumm lives in a trailer park, effectively parenting her alcoholic mom (her dad ran off years ago), who seems to care more about her pet rat, Star, than her daughter. That doesn’t mean Amy is eager to be in Oz, particularly this Oz. Tyrannized by a megalomaniacal Dorothy and mined of its magic, it’s a dystopian distortion of the paradise Baum and MGM depicted. In short order, Amy breaks the wholly capricious laws and is thrown into a cell in the Emerald City with only Star for company. There, she’s visited first by the mysterious but sympathetic Pete and then by the witch Mombi, who breaks her out and takes her to the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked (among whom is the very hot Nox). Amy may well be the salvation of Oz—only someone from the Other Place can take Dorothy down. Paige has clearly had the time of her life with this reboot, taking a dystopian-romance template and laying it over Oz. Readers of Baum’s books will take special delight in seeing new twists on the old characters, and they will greet the surprise climactic turnabout with the smugness of insiders.
In the end, it’s just another violent dystopian series opener for all its yellow-brick veneer, but it’s a whole lot more fun than many of its ilk. (Dystopian fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-228067-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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