A blistering romance novel laden with sword-and-sorcery elements.
A woman warrior fights to save her love and her country in Quinn’s fantasy romance, the second in a series.
Kiara Frey has been abandoned in the Mist. She traveled there as a member of the Knights of the Eternal Star on a quest to rid their homeland of a decades-long curse, but after a misunderstanding involving a magical artifact, the Knights’ commander—and Kiara’s love—Jude Maddox marooned Kiara and her sidekick Jake in the Mist. Due to an opportune run-in with some immortals, however, Kiara learns she needs to find Jude and bring him to the Moon God’s temple in order to retrieve a sacred moonstone necessary to trap the deity, make him mortal, and kill him, thus ending the eternal night that has plagued the land for decades. Meanwhile, Jude has made it back to civilization, where he is now wanted by his king for the crime of desertion. Jude is bent on keeping the Godslayer—a weapon that does just what its name suggests—out of the king’s hands, but that may be impossible with the forces of an entire kingdom arrayed against him. When Jude is captured, Kiara must turn to the greatest thief in the realm—a crime boss known as the Fox—to rescue him and help them reach the temple. Quinn writes with every knob turned all the way up, the emotions of her characters resonating with the same intensity as the book’s fantastical elements. Here Kiara and Jude’s desire for each other increases under the influence of magic: “His eyes burned, his stare piercing, seeing beyond my barriers and walls. I gazed right back, past his doubts and insecurities, past the mask he wore for everyone but me. The raw truth of him was perfect, made for me, and my pulse danced with anticipation.” The plot will be nearly incomprehensible for those who have not read the previous volume, but fans of Quinn’s distinctive world of finicky gods and blighted lands will enjoy this conclusion to her duology.
A blistering romance novel laden with sword-and-sorcery elements.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781649376794
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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