The emotionally charged start to an engaging new series.
In this teen fantasy debut, a college student learns of her Faery heritage and the consequences.
Cassie Marshall, a freshman at Chico State University, just turned 19. Though she’s a studious introvert with a bookstore job, her friends Becca and Miguel can usually persuade her to socialize. Recently, Cassie’s also been suffering nightmares in which she’s hunted through a dark forest by a murderous creature. On the plus side, at her bookstore she meets fellow student Dom Black, who’s charming and has golden rings around his pupils. While he courts her gently but persistently, Cassie’s dreams start taking her somewhere peaceful—a beach surrounded by trees, mountains, and two moons. In this vivid realm, she meets the gorgeous Aleksander, who explains that he is her Caomhnoir—her guardian—while she’s in the Faery kingdom of Otherworld. Further, Cassie is a Siofra—a Fae spirit that’s been born into a human body. By her next birthday, she must choose to remain mortal or join the Fae and become a protector of the Dreaming, where human souls are vulnerable. Cassie is already torn between her loving family and Aleksander when King Oberon and Queen Titania warn her that a shape-shifting Erlking (or elf) is “on the loose, and until it is found and destroyed any undeclared Siofra is in danger.” Cassie risks her soul being swallowed if she doesn’t choose between worlds soon. In her romantic and pop-culture-savvy debut, author Wilburn nails down the complex emotional situations that come with entering adulthood: “I had always let [mom] make my choices for me and now that I had to do it for myself, I didn’t know how.” Elsewhere, readers are treated to some sexy moments, as when one of Cassie’s lovers “ran his lips over my face, over my jaw and to my ear, his teeth nipping gently.” Wilburn’s prose, though mostly graceful, is peppered with typos that an editor’s final sweep would catch: “She sat on the army of his recliner.” A clever, rule-bending twist at the end should summon fans back to the Fae court for the sequel.
The emotionally charged start to an engaging new series.Pub Date: May 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499556117
Page Count: 242
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister:...
A magnificently creepy fantasy pits a bright, bored little girl against a soul-eating horror that inhabits the reality right next door.
Coraline’s parents are loving, but really too busy to play with her, so she amuses herself by exploring her family’s new flat. A drawing-room door that opens onto a brick wall becomes a natural magnet for the curious little girl, and she is only half-surprised when, one day, the door opens onto a hallway and Coraline finds herself in a skewed mirror of her own flat, complete with skewed, button-eyed versions of her own parents. This is Gaiman’s (American Gods, 2001, etc.) first novel for children, and the author of the Sandman graphic novels here shows a sure sense of a child’s fears—and the child’s ability to overcome those fears. “I will be brave,” thinks Coraline. “No, I am brave.” When Coraline realizes that her other mother has not only stolen her real parents but has also stolen the souls of other children before her, she resolves to free her parents and to find the lost souls by matching her wits against the not-mother. The narrative hews closely to a child’s-eye perspective: Coraline never really tries to understand what has happened or to fathom the nature of the other mother; she simply focuses on getting her parents back and thwarting the other mother for good. Her ability to accept and cope with the surreality of the other flat springs from the child’s ability to accept, without question, the eccentricity and arbitrariness of her own—and every child’s own—reality. As Coraline’s quest picks up its pace, the parallel world she finds herself trapped in grows ever more monstrous, generating some deliciously eerie descriptive writing.
Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister: Coraline is spot on. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-380-97778-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
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