An original, enjoyable coming-of-age story with complex fantasy worldbuilding and multifaceted characters.
A 12-year-old West African girl attempts to save children who were stolen from her village.
Abeni and her best friend, Fomi, plan to enjoy their annual Harvest Festival, but the festivities are interrupted when Asha, the local witch, appears. She reminds everyone that she gave three warnings that they must leave their homes, but they did not obey; she can no longer protect the village from the coming war. After watching over them for generations, Asha is here to collect her payment: a child. To her great shock, Abeni’s mother gives her to Asha. And then war does in fact come to their peaceful valley where they lived quietly, surrounded by a forest. Abeni watches in horror as storm women assisted by magical black ropes capture the adults before a mysterious goat man plays a haunting melody on a flute that ensnares the other children. Abeni, trained in self-defense by Auntie Asha, sets out to find the kidnapped children. She crosses paths with porcupine spirit Nyomi and panther spirit Zaneeya who join her as they pursue quests of their own. The magical storytelling and West African spirit elements will keep readers engaged, while authentic relationships between the central characters offer a nice counterbalance for the fantastical plot points, making this work appealing to fantasy and realistic fiction readers alike.
An original, enjoyable coming-of-age story with complex fantasy worldbuilding and multifaceted characters. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: July 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781250825827
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Starscape/Tor
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
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The intelligences here may be (mostly) artificial, but the feelings are genuine and deep.
A Mars rover discovers that it has a heart to go with its two brains.
Warga follows her cybernetic narrator from first awareness to final resting place—and stony indeed will be any readers who remain unmoved by the journey. Though unable to ask questions of the hazmats (named for their suits) assembling it in a NASA lab, the rover, dubbed Resilience by an Ohio sixth grader, gets its first inklings of human feelings from two workers who talk to it, play it music, and write its pleasingly bug-free code. Other machines (even chatty cellphones) reject the notion that there’s any real value to emotions. But the longer those conversations go, the more human many start sounding, particularly after Res lands in Mars’ Jezero Crater and, with help from Fly, a comically excitable drone, and bossy satellite Guardian, sets off on twin missions to look for evidence of life and see if an older, silenced rover can be brought back online. Along with giving her characters, human and otherwise, distinct voices and engaging personalities, the author quietly builds solid relationships (it’s hardly a surprise when, after Fly is downed in a dust storm, Res trundles heroically to the rescue in defiance of orders) on the way to rest and joyful reunions years later. A subplot involving brown-skinned, Arabic-speaking NASA coder Rania unfolds through her daughter Sophia’s letters to Res.
The intelligences here may be (mostly) artificial, but the feelings are genuine and deep. (afterword, resources) (Science fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311392-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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