Illuminating.
A 16-year-old survives her junior year of high school despite a sexually abusive teacher, vicious whispers from her classmates, and the splintering of her family.
“This world is full of wolves,” Alicia Rivers says, introducing the theme that will carry her and her readers through a tumultuous year. She walks the halls of her school hounded by whispers and jagged memories. Dazzling with clarity, blistering with anger, her gaze sweeps over monsters disguised as decent men and teenage girls forced into mythic archetypes. With time, however, and the stubborn kindness of new friends, Alicia, who is White and bisexual, rediscovers sisterhood and herself. There’s asexual Deja, full of humor and insight, whose Blackness brings an additional layer of assumptions and suffocating double standards. There’s Pakistani and White Geneva, who is a mystery cloaked in sunshine and a romance waiting to happen. In shimmering verse, Cole breathes life into each young woman; Deja’s character is developed beyond her role in supporting Alicia’s growing racial awareness. A girls’ discussion group led by Dr. Kareem, a local academic, offers another avenue for conversation and exploration. The specter of predatory men is ever present but never overshadows the complexity and strength of young women fighting to weave their own stories. Their conversations are varied, from the erasure of some queer identities to the intersections of racism and sexism to grief and mourning one’s childhood. This book is as wide in scope as it is economical in its language.
Illuminating. (Verse fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-48573-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Labyrinth Road
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
This tale moves beyond the boom-bang, boring theology of so many fantasies—and, in the process, creates, almost griotlike, a...
Taj, the black teenage narrator of Onyebuchi’s debut, is an aki, or sin-eater—meaning that he literally consumes the exorcised transgressions of others, usually in the forms of inky-colored animal-shaped phantasms called inisisas that reappear as black tattoos on the akis’ “red skin, brown skin.”
This really isn’t his most remarkable trait, however, even as he ingests greater and greater sins of the Kaya, the brown-skinned royal family ruling the land of Kos. What makes Taj extraordinary is the tensions he holds: his blasé awareness of his exalted status as the best aki, even as the townspeople both shun yet exploit him and his chosen family of sin-eaters; his adolescent swagger coupled with the big-brotherly protectiveness he has for the crew of akis and, as the story proceeds, his increasing responsibility to train them; his natural skepticism of the theology that guides Kos even as he performs the very act that allows the theology—and Kos itself—to exist. He must navigate these in the midst of a political plot, a burgeoning star-crossed love, and forgiveness for the sins he does not commit. “Epic” is an overused term to describe how magnificent someone or something is. Author Onyebuchi’s novel creates his in the good old-fashioned way: the slow, loving construction of the mundane and the miraculous, building a world that is both completely new and instantly recognizable.
This tale moves beyond the boom-bang, boring theology of so many fantasies—and, in the process, creates, almost griotlike, a paean to an emerging black legend . (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-448-49390-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
A deftly balanced mix of history, intrigue, and romance.
Against the backdrop of World War II, four young women codebreakers put their minds together to find a serial killer.
It’s early 1943, and Arlington Hall, a one-time girls’ school in Virginia, is now the site of a covert intelligence facility where an 18-year-old former maid secretly assumes the new identity Kit Sutherland and becomes a codebreaker. A night out turns deadly when one of their own is murdered, and Kit stumbles across her body in the bathroom. Kit, roommate Dottie, and Moya, the supervisor of their floor, work alongside Violet, one of the Black girls from the segregated codebreaking unit, to bring the culprit to justice. As the budding friends turn their sharp minds and analytical abilities to covertly investigating what turns out to be a series of murders, Kit struggles to keep her own dangerous secret—and her attraction to Moya—under wraps. Meanwhile, Moya will do everything in her power to help her girls while trying not to fall in love with Kit. The novel deftly addresses questions of inequality across class, race, and sexuality in a story that combines well-researched historical background with a nifty whodunit, a strong focus on friendship, and an empowering queer romance. The narrative follows Kit and Moya, making them the better developed characters in the largely White cast. An author’s note includes many resources about the real women whose behind-the-scenes espionage work informed this story.
A deftly balanced mix of history, intrigue, and romance. (Historical thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-33958-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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