Action-packed yet mostly flat; lacking human authenticity or satisfying worldbuilding.
In a world where all magical people are effectively enslaved, a teen hopes for the least painful future assignment possible.
There are four kinds of Orha in the Queendom of Nenamor: Mudmouths, Sparkmouths, Gustmouths, and Floodmouths, like Corith and her best friend, Zennia. They’re wards of the state, destined at age 18 for a mandatory service placement. A month ago, Zennia was sent to be the Floodmouth at House Shearwater, which like all noble houses keeps a set of one of each Orha type. Now it’s Corith’s birthday, and to her horror, her placement is House Shearwater. No noble house would keep two Floodmouths—and Corith’s terrible suspicions are confirmed: Zennia died in “an unfortunate accident.” At House Shearwater, she has occasional important magical tasks but is mostly engaged in menial labor. Surprisingly, the nobles make enslaved Orha mages perform tasks such as fetching water from the well and mopping floors. But Corith isn’t bored—she’s received a secret note promising information about Zennia’s fate, found a letter in code that Zennia left for her, and been recruited by local rebels. Throw in some cute noble boys, counterfeit magical jewelry, political intrigue, and illicit pamphlets espousing Orha rights, and the result is so many plot points that character development gets short shrift in the sometimes clunky prose. In this primarily white world, Corith is cued white.
Action-packed yet mostly flat; lacking human authenticity or satisfying worldbuilding. (map) (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9798217024223
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce.
Houck kicks off a new story arc in the world of the Tiger’s Curse series with new tigers who live in a northerly setting.
The death of their widowed royal mother touches off a crisis in the Kievian Empire; neither Stacia nor Verusha Stepanov, 17-year-old sword-wielding twin sisters, wants to be named tsarina. But questions of succession get put on hold when a battle with a sorcerer inexplicably turns the two into nonspeaking Siberian tigers. Hints of a cure send them, along with a growing entourage of men to provide assistance (and, perforce, do all the talking), on a long trek. Though most of the cast sticks to genre type, Houck throws in a wild card in the form of hunky, inarticulate Nikolai, who joins the quest because he is enthralled by Verusha—and who also killed his whole family in an act of revenge. Occasional anachronistic dialogue (e.g., “Are you ready, ladies?”) disrupts the tale’s generally earnest tone, as do the clumsy attempts at banter. A third tiger, snarky and blind but conveniently able to see through others’ eyes, trots in late in the story. The events in this setup volume unfold with many a flashback and change in point of view and head toward no sort of resolution—only the cave-dwelling White Shaman of the Tundra’s advice that further journeys are in the offing. The central cast in this Russian-inspired fantasy world presents white; the Indigenous population includes nomadic reindeer herders.
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce. (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798212221696
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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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