An intriguing fantasy world that lacks fully developed characters.
When a wicked monarch teams up with the devil to oppress the kingdom’s children, the kids must band together to fight for their rights in this debut novel.
King Hector has proclaimed himself a god and banned all other religious practices. With his magical powers and the help of his sinister master, “the god of land,” he controls the souls of children. Children fear monsters that the adults cannot see, and every night kids are found dead. To further tighten his grip on his subjects, Hector denies children the right to an education, and in the face of such tyranny, no one remembers the kingdom’s culture or history anymore. Then Sunshine is born. Even as a baby, she defies the king with her magic and frees the souls of the children. Yet this battle only starts a larger war. Twelve years later, the formidable Sunshine— who has the ability to see danger “before it happens”—and her friends are ready for the next fight: education for all children. At one point, she asserts: “We should be in classrooms now.” But standing up for education does not prepare Sunshine for an even greater, deadlier conflict, which will bring either peace or destruction to future generations. Kouam’s ambitious fantasy novel has all the vibrant elements of an epic tale rooted in good versus evil, religious struggle, and fantastical magic. But the author’s faulty grasp of the English language leads to a confusing tale. The text lacks paragraph breaks, making it difficult to follow who is speaking. And the awkward dialogue is hard to decipher (Sunshine said, “ ‘Get a sit and we will talk.’ King replied, ‘I do not receive the orders, but I am the one who gives the orders.’ Sunshine said, ‘Know that now you are going to receive the orders, because when you will not get a sit we will not talk’ ”). Prose aside, Kouam’s kingdom is a monolithic culture where everyone thinks alike. All the children want an education; all the adults follow the king’s laws. In the face of violence and threats, everyone is brave. This simplicity does not do justice to the greater complexities of the story, which is rife with conflict: Even the king’s own children turn against him. But this contentious family relationship is ultimately reduced to simple hatred on both sides.
An intriguing fantasy world that lacks fully developed characters.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5320-3533-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
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