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
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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