Maresi (Red Abbey Chronicles Series #1)

by Maria Turtschaninoff

Overview

Only women and girls are allowed in the Red Abbey, a haven from abuse and poverty. Maresi, a thirteen-year-old novice who fled famine and loss four years prior, is happy in the abbey, safe under the protection of the Mother, contentedly doing her chores and stealing time in the vast library of the House of Knowledge. But then Jai, a girl with a dark past, disrupts Maresi’s idyllic existence.

Jai has escaped her home after watching her father and brothers bury her beloved sister alive in an honor killing. And when the dangers of the outside world follow Jai into the sacred space of the abbey, Maresi can no longer hide behind her books and routines—she must act.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781419726989
Publisher:	Amulet Paperbacks
Publication date:	01/09/2018
Series:	Red Abbey Chronicles Series , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.62(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Maria Turtschaninoff began writing fairy tales at the age of five. She has been awarded the Finlandia Junior Prize, the Swedish YLE Literature Prize, and two Society of Swedish Literature Prizes. She is also an Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award finalist. Turtschaninoff has a master of arts in human ecology and works full-time as a writer. She lives in Finland.

Editorial Reviews

10/31/2016
Inside the ancient Red Abbey on the island of Menos, women and girls are shielded from abuse, rescued from poverty, and taught the necessary skills to improve their homelands. Novices Maresi, 13, and newcomer Jai have both lost their sisters, but while bold Jai focuses on revenge against the men who buried her beloved sibling alive, brave Maresi is trying to escape the pull of death herself. Fantasy and magic blend fluidly in the deeply feminist world of Turtschaninoff’s first novel, originally published in Finland. When death calls to Maresi, it manifests in the whispering hiss of the Crone, an eerily haunting personification of her fears. The island haven is a bright spot of love and harmony amid the stark realities of a dark and brutal world, crafted in the spirit of Margaret Atwood’s Republic of Gilead. The sisters and their protégés are tested by intruders, but they greet the hateful aggression with unity and a willingness toward self-sacrifice. In this first book in the Red Abbey Chronicles trilogy, the message is clear: knowledge isn’t just power, it can save lives. Ages 13–up. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

**STARRED REVIEW**
"Utterly satisfying and completely different from standard YA fantasy, this Finnish import seems primed to win over American readers."

Booklist

"Readers seeking a fresh, unusual fantasy setting and voice will likely appreciate this haunting literary detour."

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"It's hard not to be impressed with Turtschaninoff's magical world."

The Times (UK)

"Turtschaninoff puts traditional elements of female magic to effective dramatic use, especially in the climactic (and climatic) conflict between Jai’s
father and the Sisters. But what’s more impressive about this fantasy is the subtlety with which the serenity of the island and its way of life is established—through the calls of birds, the sounds of the lapping sea, the smoothness of driftwood."

The Horn Book

The novel is at once contemporary and timeless. Its unwavering feminism is resolutely modern, resonating with a range of texts from Ursula Le Guin’s 2001 Tales from Earthsea to Disney’s Frozen. At the same time, it feels authentically ancient and mythic."

The Guardian (UK)

"'Where YA fantasy can start to feel a little same-y, Maresi stands out for its startling originality, and for the frightening plausibility of the dangerous world it creates."

Telegraph (UK)

**STARRED REVIEW**
"Utterly satisfying and completely different from standard YA fantasy, this Finnish import seems primed to win over American readers."

Booklist

In the first of a planned trilogy, Finnish author Turtschaninoff introduces listeners to the Red Abbey: an isolated island colony where women and girls seek asylum from poverty, hunger, and the brutality and oppression of misogyny. The author’s rich world building introduces a fascinating society that celebrates many aspects of femininity. Sadly, narrator Michi Barall struggles to bring the abbey and its inhabitants to life. Inconsistent voicing, mixed text cues, and volume issues—Barall frequently swallows the end of sentences—plague the short audiobook. The entire production has a muffled quality that distracts from the the story, which highlights the main character’s growth from a carefree girl into a responsible, determined young woman. E.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2017 - AudioFile

2016-09-19
An idyllic abbey of women is attacked by men.The island of Menos’ only inhabitants are the Mother, learned sisters, and novices of Red Abbey. Girls come fleeing poverty and persecution; they receive shelter and sustenance, plus knowledge and wisdom they can sometimes take back to their homelands. Thirteen-year-old Maresi arrived four years ago, escaping the “hunger winters” that killed her younger sister. The Abbey’s unnamed neopagan religion serves the Goddess in her three aspects—Maiden, Mother, Crone—and although Maresi narrates in first-person, readers will understand long before she does that the Crone’s calls to her don’t foretell her death. Violence threatens, though, when novice Jai’s father invades no-men-allowed Menos. He’s already buried Jai’s sister alive, and another honor killing looms. (Jai’s two-dimensional culture consists entirely of threadbare misogyny tropes, such as women forbidden from speaking to men outside the family or leaving the house after sunset.) The Abbey’s victory—wrought by vague power based in women’s hair and a last-minute bailout by the Crone—sits alongside a mass near-rape that’s prevented when the sister currently embodying the Maiden places the rapists “under the enchantment of her radiant beauty” and sacrifices herself, in a way the text portrays as glorious and noble, to rape. Jai’s people are white and blond; other characters are either white-skinned or undesignated. Strong on neopagan religion and ritual; dubious on female empowerment. (maps) (Fantasy. 13-16)

Kirkus Reviews