More stabs, grabs, and snarky confabs, with rising stakes to push readers on.
The fates of Earth and the intergalactic community alike come to hang in the balance amid visions of doom in this middle volume.
Picking up without a recap where Ashfall Legacy (2021) left off, half-human Syd and his multispecies squad of allies, reluctant and otherwise, flee but are ultimately forced to turn and face Capt. Reno and her associates. They, being full humans and therefore superstrong and (so they think) invulnerable everywhere except on Earth, violently believe that they are destined to rule rather than being genocidally wiped out. Even readers fresh from the opener may have trouble picking up the basic premise and the backstory, but that doesn’t really matter as the pseudonymous authors stick to an easy-to-follow “spaceship chases and captures with occasional explosions in a pint-sized universe” sort of plot and give a cast featuring aliens diverse enough to include sentient gas and fungus plenty of chances to exchange banter and values. All of the actual agency continues to come from human or part-human characters who are, notwithstanding an impassive one with a Japanese name, uniformly White-presenting. A climactic battle leaves the human supremacist party at least neutralized, but thanks to an enigmatic space monster’s “flickering whorls of temporal energy,” troubling glimpses of a future Syd destroying a planet that looks a lot like ours leaves some unfinished business for sequels to settle.
More stabs, grabs, and snarky confabs, with rising stakes to push readers on. (Science fiction. 13-17)Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-284539-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Full of drama, emotional turmoil, and high stakes.
What happens to the world after the dust from a revolution has settled?
Friends Annie and Lee were children from very different circles when Atreus killed Lee’s father, dragonlord Leon Stormscourge, ending the uprising on the bloodiest day in Callipolis’ history. For too long the dragonriders held all the power while their people starved and lived in fear. Nine years later, a new generation of dragonriders is emerging, children selected and trained on merit, not bloodlines. Their dragons are finally mature enough for them to compete for Firstrider, a position of power that can give Lee back a small part of what his family lost. However, not only is Lee competing against Annie, but rumors are circulating that some of the royal family have survived and have dragons of their own. Everyone will have to make a choice: Restore the old regime, support the First Protector and the new caste system he created, or look for a new way, no matter what the cost. From the beginning, this book pulls readers in with political intrigue and action. What keeps them invested, however, are the complex relationships between many cast members. Choices are complex, and the consequences for all could be deadly. The world is well fleshed out and believable. Annie and Lee are light skinned; secondary characters are diverse, and race is a nonissue in this world.
Full of drama, emotional turmoil, and high stakes. (author’s note) (Fantasy.14-17)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-51821-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale.
A reissue of the 2016 novel published as Consider.
Alexandra Lucas and her boyfriend, Dominick, are about to start their senior year of high school when 500 vertexes—each one a doorway-shaped “hole into the fabric of the universe”—appear across the world, accompanied by holographic messages communicating news of Earth’s impending doom. The only escape is a one-way trip through the portals to a parallel future Earth. As people leave through the vertexes and the extinction event draws nearer, the world becomes increasingly unfamiliar. A lot has changed in the past several years, including expectations of mental health depictions in young adult literature; Alex’s struggle with anxiety and reliance on Ativan, which she calls her “little white savior” while initially discounting therapy as an intervention, make for a trite after-school special–level treatment of a complex situation; a short stint of effective therapy does finally occur but is so limited in duration that it contributes to the oversimplification of the topic. Alex also has unresolved issues with her Gulf War veteran father (who possibly grapples with PTSD). The slow pace of the plot as it depicts a crumbling society, along with stilted writing and insubstantial secondary characterization, limits the appeal of such a small-scale, personal story. Characters are minimally described and largely racially ambiguous; Alex has golden skin and curly brown hair.
A glossy repackaging of a jejune tale. (Science fiction. 13-16)Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-72826-839-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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