This is a young adult Fantasy that I am having trouble connecting to a specific age group. In general, it is well structured, with the layers of conflict set up neatly, most of them coming directly from the personalities of the individuals involved. The plotline is complex, involving reasonable problems with difficult solutions. The main…
Tag: YA Fantasy
REVIEW
“The Collar and the Cavvarach” By Annie Douglas Lima
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Here we have a YA Fantasy, set in an imaginary society which is uncomfortably akin to ours but allows slavery. This leads to good thematic material, backed up by subtle and realistic mental conflict in both main characters. The slave is trying to be a good slave, while at the same time plotting to free…
REVIEW
“Lost in the Vast” by Chelsea Thornton & Travis Brown
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This series is a modern take on Indiana Jones, an Alternate Reality about three twenty-somethings who act more like teenagers. Of course, that’s the target readership, so no one will complain. The writing style pops with colour and detail, appropriate to the jungles and ruins in which the action takes place, although it goes a…
REVIEW
“Madness” by Paityn E. Parque
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All right! Finally, we have a novel of the Video Game Fantasy genre that is still, at the bottom, a novel. The key point is that the author did not concentrate on the game but on the characters. This is an author writing a book for her readers, not a gamer trying to attract the…
REVIEW
“Days of Grey” by Bonnie Allen
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Road trips are boring. Anyone who has ever been on one knows it. Hour after hour of sitting in a vehicle with the unchanging road going by. Anyone who decides that a road trip will be the main action of the story needs to be aware of this. In most action-adventure fantasies of this sort,…
REVIEW
“Red Blood” by Kaitlin Legaspi
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Now that I have finished this book, I feel rather disappointed. At the beginning, I thought I was reading a pleasant, light YA fantasy. Rather too feel-good for an adult reader, in fact. There seemed to be too much time spent building up the characters and stroking each other’s egos while the readers wanted to…
REVIEW
“The Trickster’s Sister” by R. Chris Reeder
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This is a YA Fantasy, following the plotline of the teenager who discovers she is not like all the other humans. In this case, it’s not all nicey-nicey like usual, because Brynn and her family are goblins. This is Book Two in the series, so the newness has worn off, and she is left to…
REVIEW
“Blood of the Ràej” by Hayley Rae Johnson
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This is a Young Adult fantasy tale about a world where magic is held to a restricted level because of a history of repression by the Ràej, a dynasty of magical rulers. The main character, Terhese, is a secret descendent of the last king, with all sorts of forbidden magical talent she doesn’t even know…
REVIEW
“Heir to the Underworld” by J B Dennis
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Many have noted that the ancient Greek gods acted like a bunch of rowdy teenagers. Most days it seems Olympus closely resembled a middle school at lunch time. J. B. Dennis has capitalized on this and made the metaphor the reality for his novel. You see, the gods have grown tired of their occupation and…
REVIEW
“The Secrets of Hawthorne House” by Donald Firesmith
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The secret in this novel is a dream every school child must have at some time: a magical way to deal with bullies. Of course, the problem is to use the magic without letting anyone, especially your new best friend, know you’re using magic. This theme of the problems of “otherness” adds depth to the…