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TIME AFTER TIME

There’s romantic angst aplenty but little else to keep readers invested in either story or characters

Bennett mooches around his family’s high-end San Francisco house in 2012, waiting for his girlfriend, Anna, to return to Evanston, Ill., from her summer in Mexico—in 1995.

Bennett uses his amazing, inexplicable ability to travel through time to visit Anna in a series of trips that can’t feel anything but futile. With 17 years between them, how can this romance survive? Anna’s parents, ignorant of Bennett’s abilities, become increasingly resentful of his seemingly cavalier treatment of their daughter. If he can’t stick around, why doesn’t he just leave her alone? And why does Anna put up with it? Meanwhile, in 2012, Bennett begins to use his talent the way his father always wanted him to: to correct senseless tragedies. Remarkably, he feels great after these interventions, not drained and afflicted by migraines the way he usually does after traveling back through time. Conversely, his returns from visits to Anna are becoming increasingly bloody and debilitating. Bennett serves as present-tense narrator of this sequel, describing his various agonies, physical and emotional, as he continues to pursue this hopeless relationship. Once again, Stone fails to provide readers with a solid understanding of Bennett’s singular ability, seemingly changing the rules to suit her plot and characters—up to and including an apparently impossible resolution.

There’s romantic angst aplenty but little else to keep readers invested in either story or characters . (Fantasy. 12-16)

Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4231-5960-5

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013

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LEGENDARY

From the Caraval series , Vol. 2

Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play.

Garber returns to the world of bestseller Caraval (2017), this time with the focus on younger, more daring sister Donatella.

Valenda, capital of the empire, is host to the second of Legend’s magical games in a single year, and while Scarlett doesn’t want to play again, blonde Tella is eager for a chance to prove herself. She is haunted by the memory of her death in the last game and by the cursed Deck of Destiny she used as a child which foretold her loveless future. Garber has changed many of the rules of her expanding world, which now appears to be infused with magic and evil Fates. Despite a weak plot and ultraviolet prose (“He tasted like exquisite nightmares and stolen dreams, like the wings of fallen angels, and bottles of fresh moonlight.”), this is a tour de force of imagination. Themes of love, betrayal, and the price of magic (and desire) swirl like Caraval’s enchantments, and Dante’s sensuous kisses will thrill readers as much as they do Tella. The convoluted machinations of the Prince of Hearts (one of the Fates), Legend, and even the empress serve as the impetus for Tella’s story and set up future volumes which promise to go bigger. With descriptions focusing primarily on clothing, characters’ ethnicities are often indeterminate.

Dark, seductive, but over-the-top: Characters and book alike will enthrall those who choose to play. (glossary) (Fantasy. 12-16)

Pub Date: May 29, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-250-09531-2

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018

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THE GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS

From the Girl of Fire and Thorns series , Vol. 1

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

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