Weeks before their 18th birthday, four rough horsemen ride into their isolated, desert homestead, killing their star-reading...
Born on Midwinter Day, Saba and her twin brother Lugh are opposites—she’s dark, scrawny and cantankerous, while he exudes calm with his golden beauty—but that doesn't stop her from rising to the occasion when he needs her.
Weeks before their 18th birthday, four rough horsemen ride into their isolated, desert homestead, killing their star-reading Pa and taking Lugh captive. Saba embarks on a treacherous journey to save Lugh, with her pet crow, Nero, and her 9-year-old sister, Emmi, in tow. Saba and Emmi are kidnapped by slavers, who sell Saba to the Cage Master of the Colosseum, where she becomes known as the Angel of Death. Overseeing this macabre world is a king who keeps people in check with a narcotic, convincing them to renew his life by sacrificing a boy born on Midwinter Day. Saba learns about Lugh’s fate from Jack, a fellow prisoner. With the help of Nero and a group of freedom fighters, Jack and Saba escape and rush to Lugh’s rescue. This debut is a mashup of Spartacus, the court of Louis XIV and post-apocalyptic dystopia. Saba’s naive, uneducated voice narrates this well-paced heroic quest in dialect, an effective device for this tale that combines a love story, monsters and sibling rivalry.Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2998-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe.
If Anne Frank had been a boy, this is the story her male counterpart might have told. At least, the very beginning of this historical novel reads as such.
It is 1939, and Yanek Gruener is a 10-year old Jew in Kraków when the Nazis invade Poland. His family is forced to live with multiple other families in a tiny apartment as his beloved neighborhood of Podgórze changes from haven to ghetto in a matter of weeks. Readers will be quickly drawn into this first-person account of dwindling freedoms, daily humiliations and heart-wrenching separations from loved ones. Yet as the story darkens, it begs the age-old question of when and how to introduce children to the extremes of human brutality. Based on the true story of the life of Jack Gruener, who remarkably survived not just one, but 10 different concentration camps, this is an extraordinary, memorable and hopeful saga told in unflinching prose. While Gratz’s words and early images are geared for young people, and are less gory than some accounts, Yanek’s later experiences bear a closer resemblance to Elie Wiesel’s Night than more middle-grade offerings, such as Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars. It may well support classroom work with adult review first.
A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-45901-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
The sardonic tone of the narrator’s voice lends a refreshing air of realism to this riotously paced quest tale of heroism...
Edgar Award–winning Riordan leaves the adult world of mystery to begin a fantasy series for younger readers.
Twelve-year-old Percy (full name, Perseus) Jackson has attended six schools in six years. Officially diagnosed with ADHD, his lack of self-control gets him in trouble again and again. What if it isn’t his fault? What if all the outrageous incidents that get him kicked out of school are the result of his being a “half-blood,” the product of a relationship between a human and a Greek god? Could it be true that his math teacher Mrs. Dodds transformed into a shriveled hag with bat wings, a Fury, and was trying to kill him? Did he really vanquish her with a pen that turned into a sword? One need not be an expert in Greek mythology to enjoy Percy’s journey to retrieve Zeus’s master bolt from the Underworld, but those who are familiar with the deities and demi-gods will have many an ah-ha moment. Along the way, Percy and his cohort run into Medusa, Cerberus and Pan, among others.
The sardonic tone of the narrator’s voice lends a refreshing air of realism to this riotously paced quest tale of heroism that questions the realities of our world, family, friendship and loyalty. (Fantasy. 12-15)Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7868-5629-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
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