Simultaneously odd and intriguing.
As Quinn fights to save her dying sister, their realistic struggles blend with fantasy and speculative fiction in this series opener.
Quinn’s younger sister, Riley, was born with a heart deformity, and as Riley’s seventh birthday approaches, she begins to exhibit signs of heart failure. With Quinn, Riley, and their single mother out of medical options, Quinn knows they need a miracle. While leaving a wishful note at Riley’s favorite butterfly garden, Quinn follows an unusual butterfly through a portal to an alternate realm. There, oxygen, light, and other essentials of life defy earthly logic, and the boundaries of caves, deserts, and oceans merge together inexplicably. Quinn meets Meelie, an aviatrix whose plane crashed into the realm (and who Quinn later discovers is Amelia Earhart). With the help of Meelie and others lost in history, Quinn seeks a potential cure for Riley. Slipping between two worlds has its own price, however, and she must decide just how much she is willing to sacrifice. Although Quinn is 15 and acts as a caregiver with some attendant tough choices, the storyline reads more like a middle-grade novel, as it focuses on her fantastical adventures. Devoid of sex, alcohol, and violence, this book does make a good option for conservative readers. Numerous questions, including the significance of mysterious kaleidoscopes from the girls’ absent father, remain unanswered. Quinn and her family present as white.
Simultaneously odd and intriguing. (Fantasy. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61775-702-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: Kaylie Jones/Akashic
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
Sanderson (Legion, 2018, etc.) plainly had a ball with this nonstop, highflying opener, and readers will too.
Eager to prove herself, the daughter of a flier disgraced for cowardice hurls herself into fighter pilot training to join a losing war against aliens.
Plainly modeled as a cross between Katniss Everdeen and Conan the Barbarian (“I bathed in fires of destruction and reveled in the screams of the defeated. I didn’t get afraid”), Spensa “Spin” Nightshade leaves her previous occupation—spearing rats in the caverns of the colony planet Detritus for her widowed mother’s food stand—to wangle a coveted spot in the Defiant Defense Force’s flight school. Opportunities to exercise wild recklessness and growing skill begin at once, as the class is soon in the air, battling the mysterious Krell raiders who have driven people underground. Spensa, who is assumed white, interacts with reasonably diverse human classmates with varying ethnic markers. M-Bot, a damaged AI of unknown origin, develops into a comical sidekick: “Hello!...You have nearly died, and so I will say something to distract you from the serious, mind-numbing implications of your own mortality! I hate your shoes.” Meanwhile, hints that all is not as it seems, either with the official story about her father or the whole Krell war in general, lead to startling revelations and stakes-raising implications by the end. Stay tuned. Maps and illustrations not seen.
Sanderson (Legion, 2018, etc.) plainly had a ball with this nonstop, highflying opener, and readers will too. (Science fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-55577-0
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
SEEN & HEARD
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