A well-illustrated comedic and sometimes eerie tale of friendship, identity, love, grief, and confronting one’s fears.
A sentient puppet transports four teenagers to another dimension and tasks them with a grim mission in Shammas’ YA graphic novel.
On Halloween night, Marissa, Ty, and Garrett are in a diner making plans to go to a cemetery and answer age-old questions: Do ghosts exist, and can they get drunk? Marissa’s former friend Radwa shows up after a concert, and the four proceed together to the graveyard. While there, they end up in a mausoleum that houses a giant puppet, described as a “horrifying dimension-hopping mechanical spider.” On a candle the spider holds is a sign that reads, “To all the dreamers who seek what is lost: make a wish.” Radwa suggests that they do what the sign says, and after they each pretend to blow out the candle, the artificial arachnid, named Tom, comes to life and whisks them away to a place he calls Confetti Realms. Tom tells them it’s the night of “the transfiguration” and he’s short four teeth to pay for his entry into the ball. To return home (“More or less,” Tom says cryptically), the teens must collect those teeth for him. When the group finds out the truth about transfiguration, the idea of staying there and leaving behind their real-world problems becomes increasingly compelling. Karnessa’s full-color illustrations employ brightness and warm tones to create a vivid fantasy world with a layer of creepiness underneath it. The teens appear diverse—each of the main four has a different skin tone, and Ty, who uses they/them pronouns, is implied to be nonbinary. The many characters they encounter during their quest are fun and creatively imagined, from gambling frogs and dancing bears to fantastical talking birds with the power of mimicry.
A well-illustrated comedic and sometimes eerie tale of friendship, identity, love, grief, and confronting one’s fears.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 978-1952303333
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Maverick
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Bound to be popular.
A suddenly trendy trope—conflict and romance between members of conquering and enslaved races—enlivened by fantasy elements loosely drawn from Arabic tradition (another trend!).
In an original, well-constructed fantasy world (barring some lazy naming), the Scholars have lived under Martial rule for 500 years, downtrodden and in many cases enslaved. Scholar Laia has spent a lifetime hiding her connection to the Resistance—her parents were its leaders—but when her grandparents are killed and her brother’s captured by Masks, the eerie, silver-faced elite soldiers of the Martial Empire, Laia must go undercover as a slave to the terrifying Commandant of Blackcliff Military Academy, where Martials are trained for battle. Meanwhile, Elias, the Commandant’s not-at-all-beloved son, wants to run away from Blackcliff, until he is named an Aspirant for the throne by the mysterious red-eyed Augurs. Predictably, action, intrigue, bloodshed and some pounding pulses follow; there’s betrayal and a potential love triangle or two as well. Sometimes-lackluster prose and a slight overreliance on certain kinds of sexual violence as a threat only slightly diminish the appeal created by familiar (but not predictable) characters and a truly engaging if not fully fleshed-out fantasy world.
Bound to be popular. (Fantasy. 13 & up)Pub Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59514-803-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce.
Houck kicks off a new story arc in the world of the Tiger’s Curse series with new tigers who live in a northerly setting.
The death of their widowed royal mother touches off a crisis in the Kievian Empire; neither Stacia nor Verusha Stepanov, 17-year-old sword-wielding twin sisters, wants to be named tsarina. But questions of succession get put on hold when a battle with a sorcerer inexplicably turns the two into nonspeaking Siberian tigers. Hints of a cure send them, along with a growing entourage of men to provide assistance (and, perforce, do all the talking), on a long trek. Though most of the cast sticks to genre type, Houck throws in a wild card in the form of hunky, inarticulate Nikolai, who joins the quest because he is enthralled by Verusha—and who also killed his whole family in an act of revenge. Occasional anachronistic dialogue (e.g., “Are you ready, ladies?”) disrupts the tale’s generally earnest tone, as do the clumsy attempts at banter. A third tiger, snarky and blind but conveniently able to see through others’ eyes, trots in late in the story. The events in this setup volume unfold with many a flashback and change in point of view and head toward no sort of resolution—only the cave-dwelling White Shaman of the Tundra’s advice that further journeys are in the offing. The central cast in this Russian-inspired fantasy world presents white; the Indigenous population includes nomadic reindeer herders.
Returning fans, anyway, will pounce. (Fantasy. 13-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798212221696
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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