A thoughtful exploration of class consciousness, genetics, and politics that doesn’t lose track of the human story.
Three young adults negotiate sexuality in a science-fiction Ontario where the British Empire took a decidedly different path.
Helena, shy and practical, looks forward to marrying her best friend, August, after what she hopes will be a quiet, small-town debut. A surprise invitation to Toronto, where the queen herself will be visiting, upsets all her plans. Margaret, a visitor to Toronto from England, forms a bosom friendship with Helena but doesn’t reveal her secret: Margaret is Her Royal Highness, the Princess Victoria-Margaret, disguised heir to the throne. Helena has her own secret. When she enters her DNA into the Computer at the core of the Empire’s religion, it records her as having XY chromosomes. In an empire that believes genetic compatibility is holy and the Computer’s inspired by God, will being an intersex woman destroy Helena’s chance of happiness? Convenient coincidences and the teens’ own thoughtful choices come to the rescue. The worldbuilding, though clunky, fascinates. In this alternate history, Queen Victoria married her children outside of Europe’s royal houses. Brown-skinned Margaret, with kinky hair and epicanthic folds, has genes from “Hong Kong, Iraq, Zululand, and more besides.” This queer-friendly Canada is multiethnic (August is of Hong Kong, Chinese, and Irish heritage, while Helena is predominantly white); culturally, despite hijabs, kippot, and salwar kameez, it’s overwhelmingly Anglo-Canadian. Despite this bustle, the tale itself is a lovely, quiet coming-of-age.
A thoughtful exploration of class consciousness, genetics, and politics that doesn’t lose track of the human story. (author’s note) (Science fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-99497-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Green seamlessly bridges the gap between the present and the existential, and readers will need more than one box of tissues...
He’s in remission from the osteosarcoma that took one of his legs. She’s fighting the brown fluid in her lungs caused by tumors. Both know that their time is limited.
Sparks fly when Hazel Grace Lancaster spies Augustus “Gus” Waters checking her out across the room in a group-therapy session for teens living with cancer. He’s a gorgeous, confident, intelligent amputee who always loses video games because he tries to save everyone. She’s smart, snarky and 16; she goes to community college and jokingly calls Peter Van Houten, the author of her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, her only friend besides her parents. He asks her over, and they swap novels. He agrees to read the Van Houten and she agrees to read his—based on his favorite bloodbath-filled video game. The two become connected at the hip, and what follows is a smartly crafted intellectual explosion of a romance. From their trip to Amsterdam to meet the reclusive Van Houten to their hilariously flirty repartee, readers will swoon on nearly every page. Green’s signature style shines: His carefully structured dialogue and razor-sharp characters brim with genuine intellect, humor and desire. He takes on Big Questions that might feel heavy-handed in the words of any other author: What do oblivion and living mean? Then he deftly parries them with humor: “My nostalgia is so extreme that I am capable of missing a swing my butt never actually touched.” Dog-earing of pages will no doubt ensue.
Green seamlessly bridges the gap between the present and the existential, and readers will need more than one box of tissues to make it through Hazel and Gus’ poignant journey. (Fiction. 15 & up)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-47881-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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