A stand-alone fantasy that fails to engage.
The battle of the Eight is about to start, and two old enemies must face off in the final battle between good and evil, life and death.
Tristan Nightsworn and Martha von Falkenstein once were warriors, allies, and lovers who fought side by side against a common enemy in the Fifth Crusade, until betrayal tore them apart. Eight hundred years later, they once again come to life, emerging from the depths of Germany’s Black Forest. Now leaders on two different sides of a brewing war, each must co-opt allies to their side—Martha on the side of good, and Tristan on the side of doom. Eight fighters in total must be aligned to fight the final battle to decide the fate of the world. Martha’s chosen warriors are troubled teens, while Tristan is surrounded by a serial killer and a neo-Nazi, among others. But before they can fight, they must find the two fabled swords, Xanas and Aurin, the blades needed to seal the end. Originally published in Germany, this violent, dark stand-alone fantasy features a fast-paced plot with underdeveloped worldbuilding that is vaguely religious. The omniscient narration follows every character, major and minor, with a distance in tone that prevents emotional connection with the protagonists as the story hurriedly builds up to an anticlimactic, unsatisfying ending. Most characters are adults who are assumed White excepting a Black teenage girl from an immigrant family from Mali.
A stand-alone fantasy that fails to engage. (author interview) (Fantasy. 16-adult)Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64690-009-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Arctis Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters.
Two young people save the world and all the magic in it in this series opener.
When tall, dark-haired, white-skinned Christopher Forrester goes to stay with his grandfather in Scotland, he ventures to the top of a forbidden hill and discovers astonishing magical creatures. His grandfather explains that Christopher’s family are guardians of the “way through” to the Archipelago, where the Glimourie Tree grows—the source of glimourie, or the world’s magic. Black-haired, olive-skinned Mal Arvorian, a girl from the Archipelago, is being pursued by a murderer, and she asks Christopher for help, launching them both on a wild, dangerous journey to discover why the glimourie is disappearing and how to stop it. Together with a part-nereid woman, a ratatoska, a dragon, and a Berserker, they face an odyssey of dangerous tasks to find the Immortal, the only one who can reverse the draining of magic. Like Lyra and Will from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Mal and Christopher sacrifice their innocence for experience, meeting every challenge with depthless courage until they finally reach the maze at the heart of it all. Rundell throws myriad obstacles in her characters’ way, but she gives them tools both tangible (a casapasaran, which always points the way home, and the glamry blade, which cuts through anything) and intangible (the desire “to protect something worth protecting” and an “insistence that the world is worth loving”). Final art not seen.
An epic fantasy with timeless themes and unforgettable characters. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593809860
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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