Both heartbreaking and action-packed: an immense achievement.
Two children are scouted as promising prospects for opposing magical syndicates in Lu’s urban fantasy.
Samantha Lang is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant working around the clock to make ends meet in Angel City, California. Her classmate Ari, a boy from Gujarat, India, seems to be the only person who really sees her. They pass each other notes, sharing their feelings but not the specifics of their lives. When Sam’s mother loses her job, Sam is so desperate that she seeks out the fabulously wealthy Diamond Taylor, a local celebrity who has a reputation for making things happen. Sam isn’t sure what to ask for, but it certainly isn’t what she gets: When she’s discovered following Diamond’s entourage out of a fancy theater, she finds herself initiated into the world of alchemy. As it turns out, there’s a secret society of people who are able to tap into the power of their own souls to transmute one substance into another. The popular drug called sand, which is known for making people the best version of themselves, is secretly a product of alchemy. Sand is worth so much money that syndicates—organized groups of alchemists—are in deep competition with each other to produce it. As Sam grows up, so do tensions between Diamond’s syndicate, Grand Central, and its main rival, Lumines. Years after their time passing notes in school, Sam and Ari discover that they have both been trained as alchemists, and they are on opposite sides of the upcoming war between Grand Central and Lumines. Lu’s magical system of alchemy is straightforward and clever—for example, a person can fight by transmuting a piece of a table into a knife, and they can hurt an enemy by transmuting the water in their body into vapor. But even more than the inventive action sequences, Lu beautifully depicts Sam and Ari’s experiences as outsiders in the world of wealth and privilege. Ari as an immigrant, and Sam as the daughter of an immigrant, both have a lot to lose, and their precarity is weaponized against them as they are weaponized against each other.
Both heartbreaking and action-packed: an immense achievement.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781250885678
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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