The setup for a sequel doesn't entice
A Mesopotamian girl seeks love in the 18th century B.C.
In a tribe of desert nomads whose names come primarily from the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon, a 15-year-old hilariously named Jayden prepares for an unwanted betrothal. It's the time of Hammurabi, and Jayden, "a daughter of Abraham," is to wed loathsome Horeb, heir to the throne of her tribe. Horeb, selfish and lazy, abandons Jayden in her deepest tragedy, but mysterious Kadesh appears out of the desert to aid her. Even Jayden's older sister, Leila, sees which way the wind is blowing, telling Jayden, "Horeb might be your future husband, but Kadesh is the handsome stranger who can't take his eyes off you." Meanwhile, Leila is thinking about abandoning the ways of their fathers for the comforts of the Temple of Ashtoreth, giving Jayden plenty of opportunity to moralize at her sister about the wickedness of priestess practices (though Jayden herself is not quite clear what's so evil about it). When everything goes wrong (mostly because of Horeb's cackling villainy, invisible to all but Jayden), it's the people Jayden judges and finds wanting who rescue her—not that their kindness changes her opinions. Readers looking for blandly re-created historical settings that are less anachronistic than this would be better served by Esther Friesner's Princesses of Myth series.
The setup for a sequel doesn't entice . (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-219497-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel,...
Adventure drags our heroine all over the map of fantasyland while giving her the opportunity to use her smarts.
Elisa—Princess Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza of Orovalle—has been chosen for Service since the day she was born, when a beam of holy light put a Godstone in her navel. She's a devout reader of holy books and is well-versed in the military strategy text Belleza Guerra, but she has been kept in ignorance of world affairs. With no warning, this fat, self-loathing princess is married off to a distant king and is embroiled in political and spiritual intrigue. War is coming, and perhaps only Elisa's Godstone—and knowledge from the Belleza Guerra—can save them. Elisa uses her untried strategic knowledge to always-good effect. With a character so smart that she doesn't have much to learn, body size is stereotypically substituted for character development. Elisa’s "mountainous" body shrivels away when she spends a month on forced march eating rat, and thus she is a better person. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine using her brain to win a war rather than strapping on a sword and charging into battle.
Despite the stale fat-to-curvy pattern, compelling world building with a Southern European, pseudo-Christian feel, reminiscent of Naomi Kritzer's Fires of the Faithful (2002), keeps this entry fresh. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-202648-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember.
Kai’s life is upended when his coastal village is devastated in Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami in this verse novel from an author who experienced them firsthand.
With his single mother, her parents, and his friend Ryu among the thousands missing or dead, biracial Kai, 17, is dazed and disoriented. His friend Shin’s supportive, but his intact family reminds Kai, whose American dad has been out of touch for years, of his loss. Kai’s isolation is amplified by his uncertain cultural status. Playing soccer and his growing friendship with shy Keiko barely lessen his despair. Then he’s invited to join a group of Japanese teens traveling to New York to meet others who as teenagers lost parents in the 9/11 attacks a decade earlier. Though at first reluctant, Kai agrees to go and, in the process, begins to imagine a future. Like graphic novels, today’s spare novels in verse (the subgenre concerning disasters especially) are significantly shaped by what’s left out. Lacking art’s visceral power to grab attention, verse novels may—as here—feel sparsely plotted with underdeveloped characters portrayed from a distance in elegiac monotone. Kai’s a generic figure, a coat hanger for the disaster’s main event, his victories mostly unearned; in striking contrast, his rural Japanese community and how they endure catastrophe and overwhelming losses—what they do and don’t do for one another, comforts they miss, kindnesses they value—spring to life.
It’s the haunting details of those around Kai that readers will remember. (author preface, afterword) (Verse fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-53474-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
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