A vampire tale with a heady mix of defiance and doubt, rebellion and romance.
A debut YA novel sees a strong-willed teenager struggle for freedom while developing feelings for her vampire master.
In a world now ruled by vampires, 18-year-old Wavorly Sterling has spent the last decade in Nightingale, a prison school where human children learn etiquette and grow strong enough to feed their masters. Most girls Wavorly’s age are happy. Her best friend, Savvy, for example, looks forward to a life of servitude. But Wavorly is the odd one out. She is one of the few humans born free, and would do anything to be so again. She tries to escape, souring her blood for the coming-of-age Distribution Ceremony. Worse, she speaks her mind. She rails against the five vampire rulers and she disrespects her master, Lord Anton Zein, even when he is merciful. Her behavior is tantamount to suicide. Zein should have her torn apart by the fallen—humans turned bestial by vampire bites. Instead, he not only accepts her into his blood harem, but also goes so far as to install her as his favorite. At first, Wavorly clings to her resentment. Soon, though, she starts to wonder: Are all vampires the monsters she supposed? Zein makes her feel special. For all that she loathes about her life, could she in turn feel something for him? While pairing vampires and romance—two rather tired bedfellows—Quick does so only after separating and reinvigorating each aspect and keeping them for some time in edgy proximity. Her portrayal of vampire society has depth and thought behind it. The romance is explored (rather cleverly) as something that’s not happening—more tantalizing potential than swooning inevitability. The writing is crisp and the story moves swiftly, incorporating its characterization and worldbuilding along the way rather than stopping to indulge in details. Wavorly is a strong character, unsure of what she wants but in no doubt over her right to choose. Mirroring this dichotomy, the clash of genres reveals (and is made stronger by) a searching exploration of rights: those of life and freedom. Teens and adults alike will lose themselves in the gray uncertainties and throbbing heartbeat of Wavorly’s existence.
A vampire tale with a heady mix of defiance and doubt, rebellion and romance.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73307-240-3
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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