A novel that celebrates life and love the way only the best fantasy tales can.
In this YA fantasy debut, a magically powered teenager battles a ruling wizard on behalf of her parents.
Sixteen-year-old Tessa Skye lives in the village of Sorrenwood. Her father, Donal, is a locksmith, and her mother, Gillian, ran away—possibly with a lover or to her death in the river—12 years ago. Tessa adores her boyfriend, Ryland, but thinks little of his friend Ash Kemp, who grows shy around her. Lately, Tessa has been using an amulet that she found the day that her mother left, called a “windrider,” to change into a sparrow and take flight. One day, she swoops by the castle of Lord Fellstone, a conjurer who rules the region. He spies her sitting on a windowsill and suggests to his strange, masked apprentice, Ratcher, that they have sparrow for dinner. Tessa manages to escape, and after she arrives back home, Donal confiscates the amulet and scolds, “You can be sure there’s a price to be paid in using that magic.” Elsewhere, fortuneteller Calder Osric ends up in the stocks after one of his prognostications goes awry. Tessa helps free him, little realizing that there’s a link between them. Later, Fellstone’s knights murder someone close to Tessa. Calder discovers the body and informs Tessa that Fellstone possesses a special wand, the dreadmarrow, that can resurrect the dead. In this emotionally elegant debut, author Benedict takes choice YA themes—such as first love—and juxtaposes them against crafty fantasy elements. At one point, she writes of how Tessa prefers privacy while using the windrider: “There was something about the transformation of man into beast—or girl into bird—that felt intensely personal, like taking off my clothes.” The narrative also makes subtle narrative connections, such as the way that Ash’s quest for Tessa’s affection parallels Calder’s failure years ago to win over his teenage love, Faline. Benedict should be forgiven if the plot sutures up too neatly, because there are also surprises right up to the end.
A novel that celebrates life and love the way only the best fantasy tales can.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9994492-1-9
Page Count: 253
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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