A perilous, magic-school adventure that falls short of its potential.
A loosely connected group of young magicians fight horrendous creatures to ensure their own survival.
Galadriel "El" Higgins knows how dangerous the Scholomance is. Her father died during the school's infamous graduation ceremony, in which senior students run through a gauntlet of magic-eating monsters, just to make sure her pregnant mother made it out alive. Now a student herself at the nebulous, ever shifting magic school, which is populated with fearsome creatures, she has made not making friends into an art form. Not that anyone would want to be her friend, anyway. The only time she ever met her father's family, they tried to kill her, claiming she posed an existential threat to every other wizard. And, as a spell-caster with a natural affinity for using other people's life forces to power destructive magic, maybe she does. No one gave Orion Lake that memo, however, so he's spent the better part of the school year trying to save El from every monster that comes along, much to her chagrin. With graduation fast approaching, El hatches a plan to pretend to be Orion's girlfriend in order to secure some allies for the deadly fight that lies ahead, but she can't stop being mean to the people she needs the most. El's bad attitude and her incessant info-dumping make Novik's protagonist hard to like, and the lack of chemistry between the two main characters leaves the central romantic pairing feeling forced. Although the conclusion makes space for a promising sequel, getting there requires readers to give El more grace than they may be willing to part with.
A perilous, magic-school adventure that falls short of its potential.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-12848-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.
A fantasy adventure with a sometimes-biting wit.
Tress is an ordinary girl with no thirst to see the world. Charlie is the son of the local duke, but he likes stories more than fencing. When the duke realizes the two teenagers are falling in love, he takes Charlie away to find a suitable wife—and returns with a different young man as his heir. Charlie, meanwhile, has been captured by the mysterious Sorceress who rules the Midnight Sea, which leaves Tress with no choice but to go rescue him. To do that, she’ll have to get off the barren island she’s forbidden to leave, cross the dangerous Verdant Sea, the even more dangerous Crimson Sea, and the totally deadly Midnight Sea, and somehow defeat the unbeatable Sorceress. The seas on Tress’ world are dangerous because they’re not made of water—they’re made of colorful spores that pour down from the world’s 12 stationary moons. Verdant spores explode into fast-growing vines if they get wet, which means inhaling them can be deadly. Crimson and midnight spores are worse. Ships protected by spore-killing silver sail these seas, and it’s Tress’ quest to find a ship and somehow persuade its crew to carry her to a place no ships want to go, to rescue a person nobody cares about but her. Luckily, Tress is kindhearted, resourceful, and curious—which also makes her an appealing heroine. Along her journey, Tress encounters a talking rat, a crew of reluctant pirates, and plenty of danger. Her story is narrated by an unusual cabin boy with a sharp wit. (About one duke, he says, “He’d apparently been quite heroic during those wars; you could tell because a great number of his troops had died, while he lived.”) The overall effect is not unlike The Princess Bride, which Sanderson cites as an inspiration.
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781250899651
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
Reasonably involving while you’re reading it but ultimately disappointing and incomplete feeling.
A feud between two powerful witch families heats up, thanks to two pairs of star-crossed lovers and an ambitious middle son, in this stand-alone by the author of The Atlas Six (2022).
In New York City, Lazar Fedorov, aka Koschei the Deathless, trades in illicit magical items, fantastical creatures, and expensive favors extended to the desperate. His three sons—Dimitri, Roman, and Lev—aid him in his dealings. Meanwhile, Marya Antonova, aka Baba Yaga, and her seven daughters sell high-end beauty products and illegal magical hallucinogens. As Yaga prepares to extend her drug sales to nonmagical buyers and her eldest daughter, Marya, also called Masha, discovers that the Fedorovs are interfering with their business, both sides plot to finish off their rivals. Matters head toward a tragic direction as Masha and Dimitri reignite the embers of their long-ago love, Masha’s youngest sister, Sasha, becomes romantically entangled with Lev, and Roman makes his own violent plans to gain his father’s approval. What appears to be an unholy magical cross between The Godfather and Romeo and Juliet leads to an expected high body count—and that’s only halfway through the book. Since this is a fantasy novel, Blake throws in a twist that initially feels like a shocking swerve, but we’re soon headed in a similar, but potentially even more destructive, direction. Several characters exhibit deep and interesting emotional growth (some based on a clever use of magic drawn straight from the Russian fairy tales the book references), but others are never fully fleshed out. In addition, the plot unfortunately coalesces predictably (and not nearly as intricately as the scheming characters, and probably the author, imagine it does), and the denouement seems less inevitably tragic than sadly pointless. Meanwhile, many opportunities for intriguing worldbuilding (how magic works, how witches govern themselves to hide their magic from nonwitches, where magical creatures come from, what non–New York witch societies are like) are never picked up.
Reasonably involving while you’re reading it but ultimately disappointing and incomplete feeling.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-25-088485-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
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