01/01/2015
Gr 9 Up—A romantic's romance novel, this second volume in Rutkoski's saga picks up where The Winner's Curse (2013) ended. Kestrel, a member of the Valorian ruling class, is engaged and will one day rule the empire. Meanwhile, Arin, Kestrel's former slave, is the leader of the Herrani people, and his subjects are starving thanks to the emperor's taxes. Kestrel is torn between her need to help Arin and her loyalty to her father, a general in the imperial army. Arin, in turn, is unraveled by his uncertainties: Is the woman he loves a power-hungry liar, or is she the spy who is supplying treasonous information that might just help him save his people? Some of Arin and Kestrel's misunderstandings and missed opportunities are more histrionic than wildly romantic, and though the plot is saturated with sword fights, subterfuge, and glittering parties, it isn't suspenseful as the previous entry. Poetic passages demonstrate the depth of Rutkoski's research and talent. "It suddenly seemed that Kestrel had been an empty room, and that all of her wishes came crowding in. They thronged: delicate, full-skirted, their silk brushing up against each other." The ending finds the protagonists again divided and facing life-threatening dilemmas, each thinking of the other. The last sentence resonates so strongly that it might just be enough to sustain fans until the first line of the final volume.—Chelsey Philpot, Boston University, MA
There’s no such thing as a bad time for reading, there are just those days when you can’t figure out what, exactly, your Goldilocksy brain wants. No matter what kind of reading slump you’re dealing with, I’ve got recs that will bust through it like Kool-Aid Man breaking and entering his way into a kid’s birthday party. Because […]
Marie Rutkoski’s The Winner’s Curse dropped last year to immediate fan-fare. While technically a fantasy novel, you won’t find any magic or dragons in this book. Instead, it’s all about fantastic characters in all their emotional complexity. Set in a world reminiscent of ancient Rome, it follows Kestrel and Arin, two people from very different cultures, as […]
These are the truths that keep me up at night: It’s easy to let great books fall through the cracks, and it’s impossible to read everything worth reading. To avoid undue panic/reprehensible gaps in your bookshelf that will slowly come to haunt and mock you like Poe’s raven, be sure to read every single book on […]
Oh man, who doesn’t love the whole rich boy/poor girl (or vice versa!) romance trope? From Cinderella to Pretty In Pink to Pretty Woman to Titanic, we swoon at the meet-cutes, we angst over differences and circumstance, we fret over power dynamics, and despite it all, we root for our lovebirds to overcome the seemingly […]
Think walking in heels is hard? Try wielding a sword in a ballgown. Or just read about it in one of these five amazing YA reads about girls who know how to kick ass—no matter what they’re wearing.