The ornate literary style and grim themes make this read more like a story about adolescence for adults than one aimed at...
An avant-garde author’s fantasy debut is exquisitely written but draining in its unrelenting ugliness.
Thirteen-year-old Sophie Swankowski dreams of leaving behind working-class poverty in dreary Chelsea, Mass., but for now seeks relief by deliberately inducing fainting spells. When her overstressed single mother finds out, Sophie is exiled for the summer to her grandmother’s business, the town dump. That’s when things start to get strange: A foulmouthed, hard-nosed mermaid appears in her dreams. A flock of pigeons falls in love with her. And a mysterious glass artist reveals that Sophie is destined to become an empathetic messiah, purifying humanity of hatred and despair. Tea’s prose is lush and hallucinatory, occasionally producing scenes of gorgeous wonder and tenderness, but mostly it serves to depict the rotten, filthy, toxic nastiness of Chelsea and its denizens. All the major characters—saintly, villainous or trapped in between—are female; the few men are both repulsive and ineffectual. Nearly half the narrative is a string of episodes in which the third-person perspective switches from character to character rapidly, evoking disgust and contempt rather than horror or pity. (The lumpy pen-and-ink illustrations don’t help.) The story only takes flight as Sophie finally learns more about her heritage (with fascinating allusions to Eastern European legends), while growing in compassion and magical strength—but the putrid corruption around her offers no possibilities for cathartic triumph or healing, just the ambiguous hope of escape.
The ornate literary style and grim themes make this read more like a story about adolescence for adults than one aimed at actual teens. (Magical realism. 12 & up)Pub Date: May 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-938073-36-6
Page Count: 333
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes.
The Plague has left a population divided between Elites and Ordinaries—those who have powers and those who don’t; now, an Ordinary teen fights for her life.
Paedyn Gray witnessed the king kill her father five years ago, and she’s been thieving and sleeping rough ever since, all while faking Psychic abilities. When she inadvertently saves the life of Prince Kai, she becomes embroiled in the Purging Trials, a competition to commemorate the sickness that killed most of the kingdom’s Ordinaries. Kai’s duties as the future Enforcer include eradicating any remaining Ordinaries, and these Trials are his chance to prove that he’s internalized his brutal training. But Kai can’t help but find Pae’s blue eyes, silver hair, and unabashed attitude enchanting. She likewise struggles to resist his stormy gray eyes, dark hair, and rakish behavior, even as they’re pitted against each other in the Trials and by the king himself. Scenes and concepts that are strongly reminiscent of the Hunger Games fall flat: They aren’t bolstered by the original’s heart or worldbuilding logic that would have justified a few extreme story elements. Illogical leaps and inconsistent characterizations abound, with lighthearted romantic interludes juxtaposed against genocide, child abuse, and sadism. These elements, which are not sufficiently addressed, combined with the use of ableist language, cannot be erased by any amount of romantic banter. Main characters are cued white; the supporting cast has some brown-skinned characters.
A lackluster and sometimes disturbing mishmash of overused tropes. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798987380406
Page Count: 538
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
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
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