Inventive and entertaining.
A slave girl struggles to control her supernatural storm-bringing power in this series opener.
Seventeen-year-old Nym causes lightning strikes that kill those who make her angry, but they also inadvertently kill innocents. Adora, a powerful noblewoman in the kingdom of Faelen, witnesses Nym’s power and buys her for use as a weapon in the ongoing war against Bron, which Faelen stands in imminent danger of losing. Even as Nym submits to her enslaved status, she remains defiant, especially when Adora orders her to work with a handsome trainer, Eogan, to learn to control herself. She and Colin, a boy who can cause earthquakes, work together. Nym also forms an attachment with Colin’s blind sister, Breck, working as a servant in Adora’s household. All of these characters come together in the final (for this installment) battle to save Faelen and one another. Weber builds a fascinating and believable fantasy world, inventing epithets (“Teeth of a pig, what the litches was that?”) and combining medieval and modern elements (a feudal system and antibiotics, for instance). Her characters’ paranormal powers work well, and she weaves in just enough mystery about each character that they all remain interesting. The story ends with a gutsy surprise that many readers will find unusual in this genre and that leaves them poised for the next volume.
Inventive and entertaining. (Fantasy. 12-18)Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4016-9034-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dark and gripping feminist tale.
A young woman faces her past to discover the truth about one of her nation’s heroes.
When Effy Sayre, the only female architecture student at her university in Llyr, wins the competition to design Hiraeth Manor for the estate of the late Emrys Myrddin, national literary figure and her favorite author, it is the perfect opportunity to leave behind a recent trauma. She arrives to find the cliffside estate is literally crumbling into the ocean, and she quickly realizes things may not be as they seem. Preston, an arrogant literature student, is also working at the estate, gathering materials for the university’s archives and questioning everything Effy knows about Myrddin. When Preston offers to include her name on his thesis—which may allow her to pursue the dream of studying literature that was frustrated by the university’s refusal to admit women literature students—Effy agrees to help him. He’s on a quest for answers about the source of Myrddin’s most famous work, Angharad, a romance about a cruel Fairy King who marries a mortal woman. Meanwhile, Myrddin’s son has secrets of his own. Preston and Effy start to suspect that Myrddin’s fairy tales may hold more truth than they realize. The Welsh-inspired setting is impressively atmospheric, and while some of the mythology ends up feeling extraneous, the worldbuilding is immersive and thoughtfully addresses misogyny and its effects on how history is written. Main characters are cued white.
A dark and gripping feminist tale. (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780063211506
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An intoxicating, tightly plotted feast for the senses with a dramatic cliffhanger.
A vengeful Sicilian witch forges an unlikely alliance resulting in epic, supernatural consequences.
Eighteen-year-old Emilia di Carlo and her twin sister, Vittoria, have a secret: They are streghe, trained from a young age to use magic. Emilia is as introverted and romantic as her sister is bold and irreverent, but they share a love of good food and a disregard for their grandmother’s warnings about the devil and his brothers. Known as the Malvagi or Wicked, the seven princes of Hell have not been seen in years until tragedy strikes and a foray into forbidden magic accidentally summons the Prince of Wrath: Three witches—including Vittoria—are dead, and Emilia is desperate to avenge her sister and stop the killings. An uneasy truce with Wrath soon blossoms into a tantalizing, dangerous attraction with an uneven power dynamic. Rich worldbuilding constructs a post-unification Kingdom of Italy in which witches, demons, and shape-shifters live—and battle—among oblivious humans in a society strongly influenced by the Catholic brotherhood in its midst. Several significant plot points unfold in a Capuchin monastery and its eerie catacombs, and the brotherhood's conflation of witchcraft with the devil is emphasized throughout. Most characters are cued as White—Emilia and her sister have brown eyes and hair and olive skin—while the dark-haired Wicked have golden skin.
An intoxicating, tightly plotted feast for the senses with a dramatic cliffhanger. (map) (Historical fantasy. 12-18)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-42846-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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