A young boy discovers his special powers when he accidentally stumbles into a magical realm on the brink of war—a war he must help resolve.
When Elliott moves to New Orleans to live with his grandfather, his greatest concerns are his sickly mother and fending off the neighborhood bullies who make fun of the strange markings on his hands, deformities he has had since birth. It isn’t until his grandfather encourages him to check out his new basement that Elliott realizes there’s more to his appearance than meets the eye; he is transported to a fantastical world and picked up by two creatures called gimlets who recognize the markings and a bracelet Elliott wears as signifiers that he is a shamalan. The pair takes him to the council at the castle Harwelden and the chancellors throw Elliott in a room filled with water where he discovers that he can breathe underwater and his hands and feet become webbed, proving his identity as a shamalan. Meanwhile, across the land, the only other known living shamalan, Princess Sarintha, has been taken prisoner by enemy forces consisting largely of the race of serpans, who are waging war against the other races of the land. Elliott and his gimlet friends rescue a susquat beast named Hooks from the castle dungeon when Hooks promises to lead them to another shamalan hiding in the woods. But as they search, a serpan named Slipher, who has come across some special tracking magic and is desperate to prove himself to his commander by killing Elliott, hunts them. This is a bildungsroman and quest tale in the tradition of epic high fantasy, and fans of the genre will enjoy the extensive world building and imaginative magical feats. The characters are well-developed, some with poignant back stories and others whose true intentions aren’t revealed until the very end. Though the novel is lengthy, there is never a dull moment, as the characters’ actions drive the plot at a steady pace all the way to the ultimate battle. More than 70 pen-and-ink illustrations by Geof Isherwood, evocative of a Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual, add an extra dimension to Smith’s vivid descriptions. Pleasing for readers looking to escape into an expansive world of magic, conflict and racing action.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0615460475
Page Count: 615
Publisher: Medlock
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bulky, balky, talky.
In an updated quest for the Holy Grail, the narrative pace remains stuck in slo-mo.
But is the Grail, in fact, holy? Turns out that’s a matter of perspective. If you’re a member of that most secret of clandestine societies, the Priory of Sion, you think yes. But if your heart belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, the Grail is more than just unholy, it’s downright subversive and terrifying. At least, so the story goes in this latest of Brown’s exhaustively researched, underimagined treatise-thrillers (Deception Point, 2001, etc.). When Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon—in Paris to deliver a lecture—has his sleep interrupted at two a.m., it’s to discover that the police suspect he’s a murderer, the victim none other than Jacques Saumière, esteemed curator of the Louvre. The evidence against Langdon could hardly be sketchier, but the cops feel huge pressure to make an arrest. And besides, they don’t particularly like Americans. Aided by the murdered man’s granddaughter, Langdon flees the flics to trudge the Grail-path along with pretty, persuasive Sophie, who’s driven by her own need to find answers. The game now afoot amounts to a scavenger hunt for the scholarly, clues supplied by the late curator, whose intent was to enlighten Sophie and bedevil her enemies. It’s not all that easy to identify these enemies. Are they emissaries from the Vatican, bent on foiling the Grail-seekers? From Opus Dei, the wayward, deeply conservative Catholic offshoot bent on foiling everybody? Or any one of a number of freelancers bent on a multifaceted array of private agendas? For that matter, what exactly is the Priory of Sion? What does it have to do with Leonardo? With Mary Magdalene? With (gulp) Walt Disney? By the time Sophie and Langdon reach home base, everything—well, at least more than enough—has been revealed.
Bulky, balky, talky.Pub Date: March 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50420-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
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