Cecily Perryn, 13, a lowly poultry girl in 1596 England, discovers a jeweled pendant enclosing a woman’s portrait in the Earl of Montacute’s hencoops. Her strange find is quickly eclipsed by other matters: Young boys, including her friend William, have been disappearing. Seeking William, Cess makes her way to the town of Yeovil, where Jasper, the innkeeper’s son, becomes her reluctant helper. Their search uncovers a plot against Queen Elizabeth I, soon to visit Montacute House. Meanwhile, Cess attracts unwanted attention from the Earl’s sinister son after her cousin fabricates a story that Cess practices witchcraft—truer than she knows. Cess’ friend, the healer Edith Mildmay, falsely accused of bringing plague and exiled, is a witch, though of a benign Druid-esque variety, and initiates Cess into their practices. A rich portrait of rural life in Elizabethan times emerges—convincingly detailed and seamlessly woven into the narrative fabric—as readers uncover the intertwined secrets of pendant, plot and plague. While Cess’ mundane world is entirely believable and always interesting, the witchcraft, with its generically contemporary, New Age feel, is less persuasive. It’s only when we lose the witches that the story comes to life. (Historical fantasy. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4231-3843-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
If it were a Golden Age comic, this tale of ridiculous science, space dogs and humanoid aliens with flashlights in their hands might not be bad. Alas... Number Four is a fugitive from the planet Lorien, which is sloppily described as both "hundreds of lightyears away" and "billions of miles away." Along with eight other children and their caretakers, Number Four escaped from the Mogadorian invasion of Lorien ten years ago. Now the nine children are scattered on Earth, hiding. Luckily and fairly nonsensically, the planet's Elders cast a charm on them so they could only be killed in numerical order, but children one through three are dead, and Number Four is next. Too bad he's finally gained a friend and a girlfriend and doesn't want to run. At least his newly developing alien powers means there will be screen-ready combat and explosions. Perhaps most idiotic, "author" Pittacus Lore is a character in this fiction—but the first-person narrator is someone else entirely. Maybe this is a natural extension of lightly hidden actual author James Frey's drive to fictionalize his life, but literature it ain't. (Science fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-196955-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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