A richly creative magical adventure about challenging an unfair status quo.
In Dantessa, where people’s Great Game rankings determine their status, Pia accepts a deadly challenge to save her grandfather.
Three hundred years ago, the prince of Dantessa challenged Death to a game and won. Now, magically arbitrated gaming drives the island’s culture, and 12-year-old Pia Paro is finally old enough to participate. Then her grandfather loses his status, and an arbiter of the game’s magical constructs disappears him to labor as a pawn. Desperate for the money that can save Gramps, Pia joins the Seafoxes, a team comprising four other impoverished players who are attempting the deadly game of noctis. The Seafoxes’ chances against wealthy teams (who can buy magical “boons” and cheat) are slim, though. Even harder is competing against a team that includes Renzo, Pia’s former best friend, whose actions lost Gramps his job and home. Perhaps the Seafoxes’ only chance is to change the rules. Dantessa’s Venetian-inspired world of canals and palazzos is intricately built, lush with sensory detail, and a vividly imagined magical gaming culture. Pia is a resilient, brave, and empathetic character. Struggling with the Great Game’s innate unfairness and Renzo’s inexplicable betrayal, she wants to follow her grandfather’s advice to play safe but risks it all for a chance at greater change. Both the lead and supporting characters are distinct and intriguing, and the action is expertly paced. Diversity in skin tone and sexuality is casually woven into the story.
A richly creative magical adventure about challenging an unfair status quo. (Fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781665930192
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable.
Six New Jersey 12-year-olds separated by decades race to ensure the “good guys” win World War II in this middle-grade work by the author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and her brother, a children's author and journalist.
It all starts with a ham radio that Alice, Lawrence, and Artie fool around with in 1944 and Henry, Frances, and Lukas find in 2023. It’s late April, and the 1944 kids worry about loved ones in combat, while the 2023 kids study the war in school. When, impossibly, the radio allows the kids to communicate across time, it doesn’t take long before they share information that changes history. Can the two sets of kids work across a 79-year divide to prevent the U.S.A. from becoming the Nazi-controlled dystopia of Westfallen? This propulsive thriller includes well-paced cuts between times that keep the pages turning. Like most people in their small New Jersey town, Alice, Artie, and Frances are white. In 1944, Lawrence, who’s Black, endures bigotry; in the U.S.A. of 2023, Henry’s biracial (white and Black) identity and Lukas’ Jewish one are unremarkable, but in Westfallen, Henry’s a “mischling” doing “work-learning,” and Lukas is a menial laborer. Alice’s and Henry’s dual first-person narration zooms in on the adventure, but readers who pull back may find themselves deeply uneasy with the summary consideration paid to the real-life fates of European Jews and disabled people. The cliffhanger ending will have them hoping for more thoughtful treatment in sequels to come.
Compulsively readable; morally uncomfortable. (Science fiction/thriller. 10-13)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781665950817
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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