A diverting adventure with a young hero whom readers will surely rally behind.
This third installment of Strong’s YA fantasy series finds a teenager braving assassins and unknown terrain in search of a magical book.
Rapier-wielding Katheryn Stewart fights off assailants who raid her farm. She succumbs to her wounds but not before saving her 14-year-old daughter Diana’s life. The girl’s father, Richard, who’s the commander of the Army of the North, has “united the Northern States” in keeping the Sulerian Empire, an enemy in the East, at bay. Mercenaries who fight for “the Sul” are likely behind the attack against his wife and child, so Richard leads the Army of the North to war. The Sulerian Emperor may have a distinct advantage; Katheryn, with her last few words, tells Diana of the magical Book of Chaos that the emperor uses to see the future. Diana wants to head down to Branwyn, where a copy of said book is said to exist. Richard resists this plan, but Diana, undeterred, hones her archery skills, trains with a militia, and eventually travels south, and Northern general Jon Henlow follows her. Finding a specific book is a challenge, as “bound books” are rare; most people have only seen and read scrolls. The presence of assassins doesn’t make things any easier on Diana and Jon. It’s not long before the pair identify one of the people determined to kill them, and they soon suspect another individual who’s been pushing assassins in their direction. Even if Diana and Jon survive, they still have to make it back home.
Strong’s novel introduces a new protagonist to the series, although there are hints of the earlier installments’ recurring hero, Astria Sannfjaer. Diana is an admirable, empathetic lead character who’s burdened with guilt when she believes that something she said resulted in a person’s death. As this story unfolds over the course of several years, readers watch Diana mature into adulthood and, after Richard is named king, become a princess. She and Jon have an intriguing dynamic; there’s a clear sense of mutual respect, but he also must act like her father at times: “I have the king’s charge to protect you. When he relieves me of that responsibility, I’ll bow to you despite your petulance.” Their journey is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the highlight of the book, as the pair stumble upon potential spies, an attempted coup, and, of course, a touch of magic. This may all sound lighthearted in tone, and some of it is, but Diana and Jon also face grim threats throughout. The fact that they have trouble deciding who’s out to kill them indicates just how many foes they face; Diana makes one serious enemy even before she sets off for Branwyn. Over the course of the novel, a handful of action scenes, combined with quite a bit of travel (by land and sea), establish an impressive pace that rarely lets up. The ending provides resolution and a welcome tease for yet another series entry.
A diverting adventure with a young hero whom readers will surely rally behind.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9798999060501
Page Count: 506
Publisher: Impulse Fiction
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An expertly crafted rendition and a welcome invitation to younger readers to immerse themselves in the ancient past.
“Sing to me, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles”: a rousing graphic rendition of Homer’s great epic.
It’s a blood-soaked poem of primeval war, one ostensibly fought over a certain daughter of Zeus who turned the wrong head—“Or possibly an apple, or a lot of gold, or control of trade routes”—that brought vast armies to the plains of Troy. In a fight personified by two heroes, Trojan Hector and Greek Achilles, there’s more than a little graphic violence here—but nothing other than what Homer himself described, as when Achilles’ spear finds Hector’s neck, followed by Achilles’ intemperate curse: “Your corpse goes to the dogs.” That’s not very sporting, and of course Achilles gets his comeuppance. Hinds allows that his version is not complete, but all the best bits are there, and he provides some helpful interpretive hints—identifying the principal helmeted Greek and Trojan warriors with subtle alphabetical designs on their breastplates, for instance. The best graphic panels are the ones that show the war’s vastness, with a two-page spread of those famed thousand ships crossing the Hellespont, another panel showing the Greek army spilling out onto the plain, “like the great flock of migrating birds that take wing in the meadows by the stream of Caÿster—as numerous as the leaves of a forest.” An author’s note and page-by-page notes provide further context.
An expertly crafted rendition and a welcome invitation to younger readers to immerse themselves in the ancient past. (map, bibliography) (Graphic adaptation. 10-adult)Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8113-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Will catch some eyes, but this feels like edginess for edginess’s sake, no deeper.
Short, brisk vignettes flip traditional fairy tales onto their backs.
Twenty-three rewritings disclose dark secrets. Although each ostensibly has its own narrator, a lascivious narrative tone runs throughout. Dezsö matches that tone with black cut-out silhouettes of death and dismemberment, breasts unobscured. Incest recurs, as does kinky sexuality. Red Riding Hood, one example of the latter, reveals, “I was totally looking / forward to that part. With the wolf and all. I’m into danger, / okay?” Kink is rarely acknowledged in teen literature; it’s unfortunate that these tales are too abrupt to address the topic meaningfully. The line-breaks of Koertge’s free verse seem gratuitous. Sexual imagery includes both children (Hansel and Gretel “eat and eat, filling up the moist recesses / of their little bodies”) and projected rape-fantasy (the Beast claims that Beauty “almost wanted / me to break her neck and open her / up like a purse”). Descriptions are incomprehensibly flip (“Oh, her skin is white as Wonder bread, / her little breasts like cupcakes!”) or harsh (“a beautiful girl…not the usual chicken head ho”). The voice dances from incongruous humor (“it’s weird inside a wolf, / all hot and moist but no worse than flying coach to Newark”) to modernity forced into fairy-tale diction (“She’d slept over at their hovels”).
Will catch some eyes, but this feels like edginess for edginess’s sake, no deeper. (Fractured fairy tales. 14 & up)Pub Date: July 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-4406-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
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