An enjoyable tale about a tenacious witch for genre fans who aren’t expecting departures.
In this debut YA contemporary fantasy novel, a teenage witch faces her first Trial, but a much bigger challenge looms as covens battle one another and vampires gain power.
Allery Alexia Wick of South Haven, Michigan, is much like other 15-year-olds: she remains rebellious, worries about friendships, and studies hard for a test that will determine her future. But that test isn’t the SAT, because Alexia is a witch. Her family belongs to one of the three coven branches, Alerium; her parents are a High Priestess and Priest. Ambitious and stubborn, Alexia resolves to work hard with her mentor, Darren Smalls, on spellcasting and combat-oriented magic and with her after-school club on prepping for the Trials (South Haven Academy for the Gifted and Talented is a public magnet school, but many students are secretly witches). Starting her sophomore year, Alexia makes two discoveries: her best friend drops her, and Kaleb, a handsome new student, makes her heart pound and face blush. (He’s pale, slightly glowing, and needs to be invited inside; Alexia isn’t immediately suspicious.) She tries to sort out high school angst as she attends class, goes to football games, and plays Truth or Dare, but a far more serious conflict materializes among the covens and with vampires—a clash that worsens when a secret book is stolen, with disastrous results for the teenagers’ Trials. With Alexia’s sister kidnapped, the book still missing, and a war to prevent, the story ends on a to-be-continued cliffhanger. There’s much that’s competent and well-drawn in Almonte’s novel, especially his descriptions of settings and how things work, like magic or the Trial challenges. But mainly, the standard YA playbook applies: angst and defiant emotions, love at first sight, vampire boyfriend, and The Hunger Games–like trials that put teenagers at risk. And some elements aren’t well thought out, like a book that’s crucial to keep secret but whose hiding place is easily discovered by a teenager’s accidental touch. (Clueless adults are also from the playbook.) And the unresolved ending, while intended as a setup for sequels, disappoints readers wanting a conclusion.
An enjoyable tale about a tenacious witch for genre fans who aren’t expecting departures.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
PERSPECTIVES
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