An opulent heist adventure that will leave readers voracious for more.
Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows (2015) and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003) converge in this dazzling new fantasy.
The backdrop is 1889 Paris, just weeks before the Exposition Universelle. Forging is a divine art, believed to emanate from the broken fragments of the Tower of Babel. The French faction of the Order of Babel, which is currently in charge of protecting the West’s Babel Fragment, now consists of only two Houses after one House fell and another died without an heir. Séverin Montagnet-Alarie, infamous thief and hotelier, half-French and half–North African, is the rejected heir of the dead House Vanth who longs to claim his inheritance. Hypnos, the dark-skinned, blue-eyed son of a Martiniquan mother and French aristocrat father, is the patriarch of House Nyx and Séverin’s childhood rival. He offers to help fulfill Séverin’s desire if Séverin retrieves a Horus Eye, an artifact which can reveal the location of a Babel fragment. To accomplish his mission, Séverin enlists the help of his closest allies—his brother Tristan, a landscape artist; bisexual Enrique, a half-Filipino, half-Spanish historian; Zofia, a Polish-Jewish engineer; and Laila, an Asian Indian dancer. Readers will be fascinated by each cast member’s unique background and personal motives. Chokshi (Star-Touched Stories, 2018, etc.) creatively reimagines history, weaving fantastical elements with symbology and broadening the scope of her narrative by integrating multiethnic worldviews.
An opulent heist adventure that will leave readers voracious for more. (Historical fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-14454-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Immersive and engaging, despite some flaws, and destined to capture imaginations.
Magic, mystery, and love intertwine and invite in this newest take on the “enchanted circus” trope.
Sisters raised by their abusive father, a governor of a colonial backwater in a world vaguely reminiscent of the late 18th century, Scarlett and Donatella each long for something more. Scarlett, olive-skinned, dark of hair and attitude, longs for Caraval, the fabled, magical circus helmed by the possibly evil Master Legend Santos, while blonde, sunny Tella finds comfort in drink and the embraces of various men. A slightly awkward start, with inconsistencies of attitude and setting, rapidly smooths out when they, along with handsome “golden-brown” sailor Julian, flee to Caraval on the eve of Scarlett’s arranged marriage. Tella disappears, and Scarlett must navigate a nighttime world of magic to find her. Caraval delights the senses: beautiful and scary, described in luscious prose, this is a show readers will wish they could enter. Dresses can be purchased for secrets or days of life; clocks can become doors; bridges move: this is an inventive and original circus, laced with an edge of horror. A double love story, one sensual romance and the other sisterly loyalty, anchors the plot, but the real star here is Caraval and its secrets.
Immersive and engaging, despite some flaws, and destined to capture imaginations. (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-09525-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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