A competent but unremarkable addition to a “nevertheless, she persisted” display.
To prove herself and seize a chance for her mother, a girl enters a competition traditionally reserved for boys—one that could turn deadly.
Every year, the mysterious Holm offers a contest for “all gentlepersons of university age” to compete for a prestigious scholarship. Tensions are running high in the patriarchal society of Pinsbury Port, which is physically divided into the haves and the have-nots, with the emergence of an unidentified disease that slowly kills its victims. Rhen Tellur seeks a cure for her infected mother: Desperate for access to better resources, she enters Holm’s competition disguised as a boy. Weber (Reclaiming Shilo Snow, 2018, etc.) creates a high-fantasy world that evokes Victorian England but keeps the supernatural creatures, such as ghouls and sirens, roaming the margins. Tan-skinned 17-year-old Rhen is justifiably distraught over her mother’s sickness but cool and calculating when engaged with science. She’s also infatuated with Lute, an attractive, brown-skinned, lower-class boy. “The strangest woman” Lute’s ever met, she prefers spending time in her father’s lab examining blood samples from fresh cadavers over prancing around an upper-crust party. The plot and character development proceed in a predictable manner, making emotional investment in the story difficult for readers. Rhen is dyslexic and Lute’s younger brother has Down syndrome. Racial markers are ambiguous, and the cast seemingly defaults to white.
A competent but unremarkable addition to a “nevertheless, she persisted” display. (author’s note, discussion questions, recipe) (Fantasy. 14-17)Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7180-8096-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2019
An overbusy mishmash
A Nutcracker retelling includes a Victorian mob princess/warrior heroine, an alternate New York City, steampunk faeries and an epic multigenerational battle.
Seventeen-year-old Clara is the daughter of New York’s mayor—which is to say her father is the poor dupe that organized crime has mounted as figurehead leader. Heartless Patricia Plum and depraved Dr. Victor are the real leaders, with the city at their mercy. When Dr. Victor isn’t committing vile tortures on the bodies of imprisoned waifs, he’s sexually harassing Clara, who’s afraid to fight back. She could fight back, however, because Clara’s Godfather has spent his life training her to become the kind of fighter one only sees in computer games, with a tear-away gown hiding her many knives. These skills will serve her well when she’s thrust into the fairyland Cane, accompanied by sexy prince Nicholas, who until recently was a statue: a sinister, repulsively marked statue she’d always found fascinating and more recently erotic. In Cane, the humans (who once tortured faeries for fun) have been defeated by the equally sadistic and sexually threatening faeries, who force all humans to become drug addicts. Perhaps Clara can help, or maybe she’ll succumb to the homoerotic advances of the evil queen.
An overbusy mishmash . (Fantasy. 15-17)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-6598-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
This plotless, grandiloquent slice of life will appeal to readers working their way up to Ayn Rand and Tom Robbins.
A stylized, meandering sequel to King Dork (2006).
Tom Henderson’s new adventure begins where King Dork ended: in 1999, after a brutal tuba attack preceding the Christmas vacation of Tom’s sophomore year. Despite his brief sexual successes before this volume’s opening, he’s still alone but for his only friend, Sam. Their dork solidarity against the “normal” tormenting thugs of Hillmont High is doomed, however. The fall semester’s scandals have led to Hillmont’s closure, and the two boys are off to separate high schools. Now Sam’s listening to getting-the-girl motivational tapes, giving Tom advice steeped in toxic misogyny. Tom’s disturbed by Clearview High’s seemingly sincere school spirit; it reminds him of the perky normalcy of Happy Days or Grease. Tom gets his first girlfriend and discovers that getting along with others is not all it’s cracked up to be. He’s a CD-hating, vinyl-worshipping proto-hipster who, along with Sam, refers to his favorite albums by catalog number—“I actually might like EKS 74071 better than EKS 74051”—guaranteeing that neither their classmates nor the novel’s readers will be able to participate in the conversation. Meticulously described historical elements—Tom’s sister’s obsession with the family landline, the boys’ hatred of modern CD music formats, Sam’s dorky, holstered, clunky cellphone—are conspicuous in this otherwise modern-seeming story.
This plotless, grandiloquent slice of life will appeal to readers working their way up to Ayn Rand and Tom Robbins. (Historical fiction. 14-16)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-73618-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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