An uneven but promising trilogy opener.
The first entry in an epic fantasy series from Norway.
In the land of Ym, all are born with tails and are able to draw upon, or bind, the Might, the energy that flows through the world. All except for Hirka, a 15-year-old girl who cannot bind and whose tail was eaten by a wolf when she was small. As the time of the Rite—the coming-of-age ceremony when young people are given the Seer’s protection—approaches, Hirka is told the unbelievable truth by her father. She is a child of Odin, a tailless creature who was brought from another world as a baby and whose mere presence threatens everyone in Ym, for Hirka is a bringer of the rot. Suddenly orphaned, unmoored, and afraid for her life, Hirka believes that only Rime—her 18-year-old childhood friend, a powerful binder and heir to one of the 12 families that govern Ym—can help. But Rime has a shadowy secret of his own. Repetitive internal monologue slows the action, and the content skews toward older readers with one of the viewpoint narrators being 30-year-old villain Urd, but overall, this is an intricate, engaging novel. The story examines and upends everything its characters believe in, including their world, their history, their faith, and themselves, while intertwining elements of politics and Norse mythology with a side of forbidden romance. Main characters are White; some secondary characters are brown-skinned.
An uneven but promising trilogy opener. (glossary) (Fantasy. 16-adult)Pub Date: March 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64690-000-8
Page Count: 519
Publisher: Arctis Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
A rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come.
A heady blend of courtly double-crossing, Faerie lore, and toxic attraction swirls together in the sequel to The Cruel Prince (2018).
Five months after engineering a coup, human teen Jude is starting to feel the strain of secretly controlling King Cardan and running his Faerie kingdom. Jude’s self-loathing and anger at the traumatic events of her childhood (her Faerie “dad” killed her parents, and Faerie is not a particularly easy place even for the best-adjusted human) drive her ambition, which is tempered by her desire to make the world she loves and hates a little fairer. Much of the story revolves around plotting (the Queen of the Undersea wants the throne; Jude’s Faerie father wants power; Jude’s twin, Taryn, wants her Faerie betrothed by her side), but the underlying tension—sexual and political—between Jude and Cardan also takes some unexpected twists. Black’s writing is both contemporary and classic; her world is, at this point, intensely well-realized, so that some plot twists seem almost inevitable. Faerie is a strange place where immortal, multihued, multiformed denizens can’t lie but can twist everything; Jude—who can lie—is an outlier, and her first-person, present-tense narration reveals more than she would choose. With curly dark brown hair, Jude and Taryn are never identified by race in human terms.
A rare second volume that surpasses the first, with, happily, more intrigue and passion still to come. (map) (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-31035-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell...
Adolescent criminals seek the haul of a lifetime in a fantasyland at the beginning of its industrial age.
The dangerous city of Ketterdam is governed by the Merchant Council, but in reality, large sectors of the city are given over to gangs who run the gambling dens and brothels. The underworld's rising star is 17-year-old Kaz Brekker, known as Dirtyhands for his brutal amorality. Kaz walks with chronic pain from an old injury, but that doesn't stop him from utterly destroying any rivals. When a councilman offers him an unimaginable reward to rescue a kidnapped foreign chemist—30 million kruge!—Kaz knows just the team he needs to assemble. There's Inej, an itinerant acrobat captured by slavers and sold to a brothel, now a spy for Kaz; the Grisha Nina, with the magical ability to calm and heal; Matthias the zealot, hunter of Grishas and caught in a hopeless spiral of love and vengeance with Nina; Wylan, the privileged boy with an engineer's skills; and Jesper, a sharpshooter who keeps flirting with Wylan. Bardugo broadens the universe she created in the Grisha Trilogy, sending her protagonists around countries that resemble post-Renaissance northern Europe, where technology develops in concert with the magic that's both coveted and despised. It’s a highly successful venture, leaving enough open questions to cause readers to eagerly await Volume 2.
Cracking page-turner with a multiethnic band of misfits with differing sexual orientations who satisfyingly, believably jell into a family . (Fantasy. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62779-212-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK TO SCREEN
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