A fat, slow-moving, sensuous fantasy for fans of watery paranormals
A 19th-century 16-year-old witch yearns to return to her birthright.
The anachronistically named Avery Roe is destined to be the next Roe witch, selling her magic to protect the whalers of her New England island. Her grandmother had been raising her as her apprentice until Avery’s magic-hating mother dragged her away to town. Four years later, Avery is still trapped by the only magic her mother is willing to use: a curse preventing Avery from fleeing or soliciting help. Forced to live without magic, dressed up in fancy clothes and trained in a Victorian young lady’s accomplishments, Avery is both self-loathing and self-harming. While she can interpret dreams for anyone who asks, Avery lacks any hint of how to unlock her magic. Her aging grandmother can no longer serve the town’s magical needs—and meanwhile, Avery’s been having prophetic dreams of her own murder. A young, tattooed Polynesian sailor named Tane needs Avery’s dream-telling assistance, and he swears he can end her mother’s curse. When Tane tattoos Avery with his magic (a regrettably exoticized moment), perhaps she’ll be stronger than her mother at last. Secrets abound in Avery’s world, and nobody’s as villainous as she suspects.
A fat, slow-moving, sensuous fantasy for fans of watery paranormals . (Fantasy. 13-15)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-40451-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
New mysteries—Does the cure work? Why are teenagers exploding?—will keep Jessie's story going for at least one more volume.
Volume three in the 13 to Life series begins in a mental asylum and ends with an unexpected burst of girl power.
Jessie's life is complicated: Her current boyfriend Pietr's a werewolf, her ex-boyfriend controls minds and her blood is a vital ingredient in the cure for lycanthropy. To top it all off, she's been thrown into a pseudo-Victorian mental institution of dubious legitimacy. The narrative, alternating between Jessie's point of view and that of Pietr’s human brother, leaves no point of drama unexploited. There are imprisoned mothers and battered girlfriends, Interpol and the Russian mob, drugged cafeteria food and zombie-golem-robot thugs. Jessie and her friends are determined to rescue Pietr’s mother from a shadowy organization that is probably not the CIA, but at what cost? It's not always clear what's going on, with prose so terse (one-to-two–sentence paragraphs are the norm) that vital information is often left unsaid. Still, all the players manage to come together for a final shootout that gives the girls an opportunity to get a small amount of their own vengeance—a brief moment of respite in the institutionalization, domestic violence, rape, medical experimentation and other constant violence against women that permeates Jessie's story.
New mysteries—Does the cure work? Why are teenagers exploding?—will keep Jessie's story going for at least one more volume. (Paranormal romance. 13-15)Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-60916-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
Nasty Prince Henry of the Seelie Court has come to Avalon, the city caught between the human realm and Faerie, to invite...
At last, Dana meets a Fae boy who doesn't want to sleep with her in this third in the Faeriewalker series, which began with Glimmerglass (2010).
Nasty Prince Henry of the Seelie Court has come to Avalon, the city caught between the human realm and Faerie, to invite half-human Dana to be formally presented at Court. Dana and her father are sure there's a deeper game at play—don't both Fae queens want Dana dead because of her dangerous Faeriewalker powers?—but she has no choice but to obey the summons. The journey from the incongruously modern Avalon (why do Faeries celebrate Christmas?) to the Seelie Court is chock-full of all the necessary adventures, from monster attacks to opportunities for heroic self-sacrifice. Dana finally exercises both her magical powers and her intelligence in order to help herself and her friends. And of course, there's plenty of opportunity for chest thumping among her various suitors. Dana's youthful narrative style can be disconcertingly at odds with the steaminess she describes ("I was smushed up against him… [and] painfully aware that he, uh, enjoyed having me there"); this realistic teen heroine has an occasionally bumpy meeting with romance conventions. But Dana's grim-but-hopeful interactions with her alcoholic mother ground this urban fantasy in a welcome verisimilitude.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-57595-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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