A well-paced series starter that mixes fantasy, romance, and mystery with enjoyably grim overtones.
In this YA fantasy, science and magic clash when a girl with a hidden agenda attends a royal wedding.
Seventeen-year-old Lady Emrys Bruma has come to the court of Queen Tabora in Wyst, a realm where science rules and magic is scorned. She’s ostensibly there to make her official debut and to represent her ill father at the royal wedding of Prince Ryland and his bride-to-be from the magic-oriented land of Etruria—a union designed to keep the peace between the two previously warring kingdoms. Emrys’ real motive is to search for a long-lost object. Wyst’s king had exiled her late great-uncle for supposedly trying to create an all-powerful philosopher’s stone fueled by pure Aether—a blend of the elements of air, fire, water, and earth. The stone, which was dubbed a fake at the time, disappeared. Emrys’ father, who refers to the exile as the Disgrace, is convinced that the stone was real and is hidden somewhere in the palace, and he’s tasked his daughter with finding it. Reed (Dreamscape, 2017) has conceived a detailed plot that grows darker as the book progresses. Along the way, Emrys makes unexpected friendships and finds herself attracted to handsome Prince Ryland’s edgy pal Ajay. Readers know Emrys’ mission and her own personal secret from the start, but Reed craftily slips in numerous surprises for readers and for Emrys herself. By the end, there are some ominous revelations involving hidden identities and unexpected betrayals. The unexpected reappearance of a dangerous figure from Emrys’ early childhood is clearly meant to carry over to the next book in the series, which promises future travels beyond the borders of Wyst, which may involve the “near-mythical” Faerfolk.
A well-paced series starter that mixes fantasy, romance, and mystery with enjoyably grim overtones.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-941637-67-8
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Ellysian Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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