by Vic James ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017
An absorbing first installment that presages an intriguing new fantasy series.
In a debut novel, James introduces readers to an alternate modern-day England where enticing drama and social unrest mix with aristocratic scandal and glamorous magic.
Luke and Abigail Hadley are teenagers living in an England ruled by aristocratic families who wield magical power. All commoners without magical “Skill” are obligated to serve for a decade as slaves, either in the industrial horrors of a slave town, the lowest and most dangerous ranks of the military, or on the grand estates of their masters. When Luke and Abigail’s parents decide that their whole family should serve their decades together, Abigail manages to get them assigned to the lavish and powerful estate of the Jardine family, but a last-minute reassignment sends Luke to the miserable slave town of Millmoor. Separated from his family, Luke finds friendship among a plucky group of abolitionists playing a dangerous “game,” and the threads of his story begin to tangle with the political intrigue and powerful magic that Abigail stumbles into at the Jardine estate. The plot proceeds at a satisfying pace, switching between storylines at just the right intervals to gratify both suspense and impatience, and while the architecture of the story is not particularly original (conjuring up the specters of Les Misérables and Downton Abbey), its execution elicits the pleasurable urge to find out what happens next. The characters are similarly engaging, a cast of likable and occasionally unusual individuals who slip easily into the reader’s imagination, and while the jarring elements of their world—a society that contains video games and earbuds nestled alongside both magic and systematic, socially accepted slavery—might disorient at first, their selfish motivations and competing desires for maintenance or righteous change pull believability in their wake.
An absorbing first installment that presages an intriguing new fantasy series.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-425-28415-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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by Leigh Bardugo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2019
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
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New York Times Bestseller
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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by Pierce Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 6, 2015
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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