Phenomenal.
Young Mage is sent out to explore a fantastical world with dark sides.
Titular Mage is an innocent magic-wand user. Their design is rounded and has a wholesome, vintage, ligne claire feel to it, giving them strong characterization from the start. Their happy exploration of ruins and use of plant magic are interrupted by a monster that swallows them whole—and that’s only the beginning of the creatures they face. In this almost wordless graphic novel, readers make meaning and piece together the narrative by following the art. This narrative device effectively captures reader sympathy and induces a shared sense of exploration. The art is also a pleasure to follow all on its own, with exquisite linework and detail, especially in the surprises and horrors—some of them quite grotesque and embracing body horror—that Mage faces. Each page has a heavy border; while some have multiple panels, most are single-page, and the effect is as though readers are looking through a portal to Mage’s world. What little text there is gives key insights to Mage’s purpose, though it is ambiguous enough not to spoon-feed information. On their journey, Mage meets and bonds with two strangers, in particular, who remain unnamed until backmatter character sketches. One of them has an elven vibe with pointy ears and is a bespectacled, curious, book-carrying being with dark skin; other characters are pale or not humanoid. (This review has been updated to correct a character's pronoun.)
Phenomenal. (Graphic fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9781638991199
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Iron Circus Comics
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
An exciting and bittersweet ending to a compelling duology.
The gang gets back together after the catastrophic events of A Tempest of Tea (2024).
Arthie Casimir and her brother, Jin, managed to uncover the real identity of—and steal a ledger with incriminating evidence about—the Ram, monarch of Ettenia, but their crew, a mix of vampires and humans, is irrevocably changed. The revelation of a secret leads to a rift between the siblings, the Ram is still in power, and now humans are going missing, with blame unjustly falling on the vampires. To take down the colonizer of her birth country, Arthie must get everyone to work together again, travel back to her homeland of Ceylan, and pull off her most daring heists yet. With chapters alternating among the perspectives of Arthie, Jin, and Felicity “Flick” Linden—a skilled forger and Jin’s love interest—this genre mashup set in an intricate fantasy world combines exciting action and adventure, heartfelt romance, and complex paranormal beings, all while feeling relevant to real-world issues. The trio of non-white leads face racial prejudice among other hardships in a society that constantly underestimates them. The plot takes a little while to really get started, but once the action amps up, there are plenty of tense and impassioned moments. The ending satisfyingly wraps up the main conflicts and is sure to evoke a strong emotional response from invested readers.
An exciting and bittersweet ending to a compelling duology. (map) (Fantasy. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780374389420
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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