An epic tale that contains multitudes.
In this follow-up to City of the Plague God (2021), 14-year-old Iraqi American Sikander Aziz and friends find the tablet of destinies and encounter a god who intends to use it to destroy the world.
Visiting London accompanied by Rabisu, a demon and social media influencer with an appetite for the unsavory, Sik meets up with his late brother Mo’s friend Daoud, a former deli employee–turned–international supermodel. He’s also reunited with warrior Belet, daughter of the goddess Ishtar, who uses Daoud’s fame to access an auction of priceless looted antiquities in search of the tablet of destinies once owned by Cleopatra and Saladin. Malevolent deity Lugal, seeking the same treasure, disrupts the auction—but not before Sik manages to inadvertently use it to bring Mo back to life, reshaping the timeline of events at devastating cost. Lugal’s later theft of the tablet results in continued alterations of time, with the ultimate goal of resurrecting Tiamat, the primordial dragon goddess of chaos, with world-ending consequences. Chadda excels in this action-packed adventure peppered with scenes examining Western theft of cultural artifacts, xenophobia, and Islamophobia and grounded in emotional depth and tenderness for humanity. Arabic words and Islamic concepts, terminology, phrases, and practices are effortlessly included throughout. In this novel centering Muslim characters—the Aziz family and Daoud—Chadda delicately reconciles the fundamental Muslim belief in one God with the presence of Mesopotamian deities.
An epic tale that contains multitudes. (glossary) (Fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781368081825
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Rick Riordan Presents/Disney
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
