Publishers Weekly
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.)
From the Publisher
Críticas:
«Absolutamente gratificante y completamente diferente de la fantasía juvenil estándar». -Booklist
«Es difícil no quedar impresionado con el mundo mágico de Turtschaninoff». -The Times
«La novela es a la vez contemporánea y atemporal. Su feminismo inquebrantable es decididamente moderno [...]. Al mismo tiempo, da la sensación de ser auténticamente antiguo y mítico». -The Guardian
The Horn Book
"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."
Booklist
**STARRED REVIEW**
"Utterly satisfying and completely different from standard YA fantasy, this Finnish import seems primed to win over American readers."
Telegraph (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."
The Times (UK)
"It's hard not to be impressed with Turtschaninoff's magical world."
The Guardian (UK)
“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."
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
**STARRED REVIEW**
"Utterly satisfying and completely different from standard YA fantasy, this Finnish import seems primed to win over American readers."
Kirkus Reviews
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)
