Though dense with worldbuilding, this dragon rider tale remains refreshingly optimistic.
In this YA fantasy debut, a teen learns that his destiny involves a distant planet, several races of magical beings, and the defeat of a Dark King.
In 18th-century Persia, Xerxes has just turned 15. On his chest is a birthmark shaped like a dragon’s head, and his grandfather Azman calls him Dragonheart. For the boy’s birthday, Azman gives Xerxes a prized sword that he forged himself years ago. He also suggests that Xerxes and his friend Kaspar skip their morning chores and ride into the city with him. But on the busy streets, the boys accidentally spill a man’s pastries and must run for cover. At the insistence of a strangely garbed fighter, they duck into a curiosity shop. Inside they meet the warrior, named Zalgarra, who instructs Xerxes to seize a gold lamp. The teens argue about taking the advice seriously when a dark-cloaked creature appears and attacks. Xerxes grabs the lamp and finds himself transported to the planet Ishtar, where he is the prophesied Thirteenth Dragon Rider. His arrival marks the beginning of his training with Grandmaster Nab and the dragon named Sesha, and the hunt for the Pearl of Immortality—crucial to the bond between dragon and rider. Attempting to thwart the hero are the Dark King of Snakes, Xul-Nagrah, and the wretched Queen Kaliiya. In her epic novel, Singh marries reliable genre elements like dragons and elves with strong statements on fate, as when Azman says, “Accept what Destiny has weaved for you, for no Design of Life can be altered.” On Ishtar, heavy sweeps of lore surround Xerxes, including the presence of the long-lived Aryans, Nemurs, and Bazilians—all presided over by the Elder Gods—and the True Flame, which facilitates magic. Singh’s prose conjures loveliness, like the chamber with “a dark background radiant with flickering stars” that’s embellished with “images of colourful dragons.” Fantasy fans of all ages who love meaty chunks of layered mythology and a strict light versus dark dynamic should enjoy this series’ opening volume.
Though dense with worldbuilding, this dragon rider tale remains refreshingly optimistic.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Black Panther
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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