Requires extraordinary patience and attention but pays off with an immersive reading experience that will linger.
In this dark fantasy, a malevolent power lurks in the bowels of a nameless, placeless, timeless city.
Runner Errol Thebes is handsome, heroic, talented, and charismatic; outcast Jamila Foundling is clever, fearless, selfless, and uncanny; bard Odd Thebes is brilliant, lazy, witty, and selfish. A mysterious pair of iron needles draws the three teenagers into a twisty web of magic and intrigue. This trio (and dozens of supporting characters) may be compelling, but the true protagonist is the city: Bounded by massive walls and 1,000 high towers tied together by an intricate net of fly-lines and rooftop runners, it’s a city where no one enters or leaves. The rich, dense prose is studded with lists of names, products, artifacts, even smells, constructing a mosaic world from fragments of languages, a kaleidoscopic narrative from legends and myths, which dazzles, confuses, and exhausts—until suddenly the pattern shifts and coheres into a macabre marvel of a tale. Odd’s sarcastic voice threads seductively throughout the labyrinthine structure, though he’d be the first to admit that he’s a mess, consumed by jealousy, self-pity, and spite. The city’s polyglot culture suggests ethnic diversity, but physical descriptions defy specific identification. While the society lacks racial or gender bias, there is an oppressive class system in addition to life under a brutal quarantine.
Requires extraordinary patience and attention but pays off with an immersive reading experience that will linger. (maps; elements of clock and calendar; guild towers of Gallia district) (Fantasy. 15-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-55532-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A charming cozy fantasy about defying expectations and finding love.
The lives of two Los Angeles girls inhabiting different universes intersect, proving that love knows no bounds.
Brenda Nguyen has a 19-step plan to save the world. Kat Woo is haunted by her legacy as the chosen one, a role she has no interest in. Brenda, working on an environmental science college scholarship application, stumbles into Sammy’s Coffee and Pick-Me-Ups, which Kat’s family owns. As the girls get to know each other, Brenda at last finds someone who’ll listen to her detailed plans, while Kat discovers she has something to look forward to. The girls, who alternate narrating the story, must defy the odds as their worlds begin to collide. As well as being a love story, this is an exploration of familial expectations: Kat is trying to outrun them, while Brenda is driven to fulfill hers. The girls, who are of Chinese and Vietnamese descent, respectively, complement each other: Brenda learns to live in the present, and Kat begins to look to the future. While there are pixie swarms and mana surges, the action takes a back seat to characterization. Lee’s fully developed parallel worlds are alike in many ways, although in Kat’s, you can buy teleportation spells at Target. The cast is rounded out by solid portrayals of the girls’ friends and family, who are important to the plot.
A charming cozy fantasy about defying expectations and finding love. (author’s note, recommended reading) (Fantasy romance. 14-18)Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250778024
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters.
Two young people save the world and all the magic in it in this series opener.
When tall, dark-haired, white-skinned Christopher Forrester goes to stay with his grandfather in Scotland, he ventures to the top of a forbidden hill and discovers astonishing magical creatures. His grandfather explains that Christopher’s family are guardians of the “way through” to the Archipelago, where the Glimourie Tree grows—the source of glimourie, or the world’s magic. Black-haired, olive-skinned Mal Arvorian, a girl from the Archipelago, is being pursued by a murderer, and she asks Christopher for help, launching them both on a wild, dangerous journey to discover why the glimourie is disappearing and how to stop it. Together with a part-nereid woman, a ratatoska, a dragon, and a Berserker, they face an odyssey of dangerous tasks to find the Immortal, the only one who can reverse the draining of magic. Like Lyra and Will from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Mal and Christopher sacrifice their innocence for experience, meeting every challenge with depthless courage until they finally reach the maze at the heart of it all. Rundell throws myriad obstacles in her characters’ way, but she gives them tools both tangible (a casapasaran, which always points the way home, and the glamry blade, which cuts through anything) and intangible (the desire “to protect something worth protecting” and an “insistence that the world is worth loving”). Final art not seen.
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593809860
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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