Book Review: Ruinsong by Julia Ember

In Julia Ember’s dark and lush LGBTQ+ romantic fantasy Ruinsong, two young women from rival factions must work together to reunite their country, as they wrestle with their feelings for each other.

Her voice was her prison…
Now it’s her weapon.

In a world where magic is sung, a powerful mage named Cadence has been forced to torture her country’s disgraced nobility at her ruthless queen’s bidding.

But when she is reunited with her childhood friend, a noblewoman with ties to the underground rebellion, she must finally make a choice: Take a stand to free their country from oppression, or follow in the queen’s footsteps and become a monster herself.

Book Review: Weave a Circle Round by Kari Maaren

The unexpected can move in next door

Freddy wants desperately to not be noticed. She doesn’t want to be seen as different or unusual, but her step-brother Roland gets attention because he’s deaf, and her little sister Mel thinks she’s a private detective. All Freddy wants to do is navigate high school with as little trouble as possible.

Then someone moves into the house on Grosvenor Street. Two extremely odd someones.

Cuerva Lachance and Josiah aren’t . . . normal. When they move in next door, the house begins to exhibit some decidedly strange tendencies, like not obeying the laws of physics or reality. Just as Freddy thinks she’s had enough of Josiah following her around, she’s plunged into an adventure millennia in the making and discovers the truth about the new neighbors.

Book Review: Pantomime by Laura Lam

In a land of lost wonders, the past is stirring once more . . .
Gene’s life resembles a debutante’s dream. Yet she hides a secret that would see her shunned by the nobility. Gene is both male and female. Then she displays unwanted magical abilities – last seen in mysterious beings from an almost-forgotten age. Matters escalate further when her parents plan a devastating betrayal, so she flees home, dressed as a boy.

The city beyond contains glowing glass relics from a lost civilization. They call to her, but she wants freedom not mysteries. So, reinvented as ‘Micah Grey’, Gene joins the circus. As an aerialist, she discovers the joy of flight – but the circus has a dark side. She’s also plagued by visions foretelling danger. A storm is howling in from the past, but will she heed its roar?

The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett: An Icy Fantasy Novel of Intrigue and Ambition

Claire Eliza Bartlett’s YA fantasy novel The Winter Duke is an atmospheric story of with ambition and intrigue. While I initially picked it up because it features a F/F romance and I was participating in a reading challenge focus on sapphic romances, I found myself  enjoying this for far more than just the romance.

Twelve Dead Princesses by Eleanor M. Rasor: A Gothic YA Retelling

Twelve Dead Princesses is a dark retelling of the classic fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Shortly before Lark, soon-to-be-queen of Belmarros, comes of age, she and her eleven sisters fall ill. On the brink of death, they are saved by Sol, a tattooed stranger with powerful magic, and find themselves owing him a debt. Sol, however, is more than meets the eye, and he wants the princesses to dance for him at night in his otherworldly kingdom. As they dance, Larka finds it increasingly difficult to balance their secret visits, her responsibilities as future queen, and her growing attraction to Sol.

Growing up, I devoured any retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses I could find. I loved the original fairy tale–the otherworldly balls and metallic forests, the mystery, the promise of sister relationships that weren’t simply evil stepsisters–but I always found the original rather lacking on details. Despite the title, the story focuses on a young soldier who marries the eldest princess, leaving the sisters themselves enigmatic blanks. Why did the sisters dancing, anyway? Where were they dancing and how did they get there? So I turned to retellings to find some answers. (Anyone remember The Princess Curse? Or Princess of the Midnight Ball? Or Entwined? Or the Thirteenth Princess? Or One Hundred Nights of Hero? Oh, nostalgia.) In middle school, I even played around with writing my own retelling for a while. (Unfortunately, my sister beat me to it. But her version is so good, I can’t even be mad.)

Eleanor M. Rasor’s retelling puts any suitors or soldiers in the background, choosing to focus on the eldest sister. Princess Larka of Belmarros is an orphan, responsible for her eleven younger sisters and, soon, the throne itself. When she and her sisters contract a fatal illness, they’re saved from death’s door by Sol, a mysterious stranger with hundreds of tattoos and powerful magic. Sol’s terms for this cure are simple: in exchange for saving their lives, the princesses will dance in his underground kingdom every night, bringing life and joy to the darkness. 

“Maybe someone else would have seen a princess and a worthy heir to the throne of Belmarros, but all Larka could see was a frightened girl playing dress-up and being thrust into so many responsibilities at once that even thinking about them made her feel as if she was drowning.”

Unfortunately, her debt to Sol isn’t the only thing on Larka’s mind as she dances. The legacy of the former king, her recklessly lavish, irresponsible father who left the kingdom a wreck when he died, casts a long shadow as she prepares to take on responsibility as queen. At only eighteen, Larka is expected to ascend the throne and find a suitable husband within a matter of months. Dancing in Sol’s kingdom soon becomes not only the payment of a debt, but an escape from the world above and her growing, heavy responsibilities as Larka finds herself drawn to Sol himself. (If you’re a fan of romances in books like Wicked Saints or The Bear and the Nightingale, I think you’ll really enjoy the romance that springs up in Twelve Dead Princesses.)

But truly, one of my favorite parts of the book was Larka herself. I loved that she felt like a realistic teen protagonist in fantasy. Despite being raised to become queen, she has thousands of worries about whether she’ll be good enough and about whether she will become a bad ruler like her father. Even the romance really ties in Larka’s arc of self-empowerment, which I loved.

“The War of the Gods was an undeniable truth: the gods had fought, and the gods had died. Their battles had raged in the seas and in the skies, and one by one they had been cut down, falling from the heavens to land on the world they had fought over, their skulls becoming hills and their spines mountain ranges.”

Rather than simply being a generic fairy tale world, the world of Twelve Dancing Princesses is set in a unique, gothic fantasy world I loved watching unfurl on the page. In Larka’s world, the gods killed each other thousands of years ago in a terrible war and the repercussions of their deaths resonate across the culture and world. (For example, the island capital is Belmarros is built on the skeleton of a dead god! Human magicians use tattoos to tie the remnants of magic to themselves! There’s an invisibility cloak made from god hair!) I mentioned in my review for The Priory of the Orange Tree that I loved the conspiracy that emerges about whether the very foundations of the world are true, and Twelve Dead Princesses has a very similar one that I also enjoyed a lot. (Yes, I’m keeping this vague. Read the book if you want answers.)

There are a lot of others things I could talk about liking–how this book makes twelve sisters by the same king actually make sense or my love for the side characters like Larka’s sisters–but then we’d be here all day. Overall, if you’re looking for a good gothic YA fantasy of a unique retelling of a classic fairy tale, you couldn’t do better than Twelve Dead Princesses.

Diversity notes: Larka’s sisters Gwynna, Rhiannon, Katharine, Kristina, and Karoline are biracial Black/White (their mother was a princess from an island nation that seemed Caribbean-esque to me). Rhiannon is also a lesbian and Gwynna is bi. Larka’s uncle/regent, Stefan, his gay, and his husband is Black. (Also, there’s no sexism/homophobia/racism in this fantasy world.)

Freepik attribution

Twelve Questions With the Author of Twelve Dead Princesses

Twelve Dead Princesses is a dark retelling of the classic fairy tale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Shortly before Larka, soon-to-be-queen of Belmarros, comes of age, she and her eleven sisters fall ill. On the brink of death, they are saved by Sol, a tattooed stranger with powerful magic, and find themselves owing a debt. Sol, however, is more than meets the eye and he wants the princesses to dance for him at night in his otherworldly kingdom. As they dance, Larka finds it increasingly difficult to balance their secret visits, her responsibilities as future queen, and her growing attracting to Sol…

Today I’ve got something new for the blog: an author interview! I’ve got twelve questions with Eleanor M. Rasor, the author of the new release Twelve Dead Princesses. I’m really excited to chat with her today because 1) her book is a fantastically unique, gothic retelling of one of my favorite fairy tales and 2)…she’s my sister! Keep reading to hear about her writing process, inspirations, and what brand of shoe a death god might wear!

Describe your book in five words.

Death. Gods. Romance. Dancing. Gothic.

What was the inspiration for Twelve Dead Princesses? How did you come up with your unique spin on a classic fairytale?

When I was a kid, I adored fairy tales and used to read them constantly. One that I used to read over and over was The Twelve Dancing Princess which, for anyone unfamiliar with it, is about a king with twelve daughters who go to a mysterious ball every night and dance their shoes to pieces. The story never properly explains what this ball is or why they’re dancing there, and I always felt unsatisfied by it. I’ve read a ton of retellings of the story and I wanted to write my own. At some point I thought to myself, what if the land they’re dancing is in the underworld? And so the idea for my book was born.

 

What was the writing process like? Specifically, tell us about the program you were a part of that allowed a teenager to publish a fantasy book?

I started writing Twelve Dead Princesses during my sophomore year of high school as a short story for my creative writing class, but it quickly spiraled out of control. I tried to do it for 2016 NaNoWriMo but didn’t finish and I just kept writing it in between other projects. Eventually I decided to apply to a program called Young Emerging Authors, run by an amazing nonprofit called the Telling Room, where four teenagers are selected to write, edit, and publish a book over the course of a year. I got in, and I finished writing and revising my book with the help of a really great mentor. The program forced me to write much quicker–it took me almost three years to write the first draft and about ten months to edit it–and I learned a lot about writing and editing over the course of this book.

I know the final version of your book is pretty different from the initial concept. How did your story change during writing/revisions?

Oh boy, it changed a lot. My first draft was 127,000 words long (for reference my final draft was about 90,000 words) and had the points of view of the three eldest sisters. When I stepped back and looked at the book, though, I realized that it was way too long. Since two of the points of view weren’t adding much to the book, just spiraling out into increasingly random plot lines, I ended up deleting them (and one of my favorite side characters, sadly). The finished version has a single point of view, focuses much more on the retelling aspect, and also has a completely different ending.

What was your favorite part or character to write?

My favorite part to write was probably anything set in the underworld. It’s a totally different world than the living one, with different rules and inhabitants, and I liked slowly unspooling the mystery of it at the same time the main characters are learning.

Tell us something about your book that isn’t in the description!

This is really an extremely minor detail, but the god of death never wears shoes. I couldn’t decide what kind of shoes he would wear, so he’s just barefoot during the whole book.

Who do you think Twelve Dead Princesses would appeal to?

I think it’ll appeal to fans of fairy tale retellings with a slightly more gothic air. Also anyone who enjoys the types of romance with a little more darkness, like Wicked Saints by Emily Duncan or the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden.

Retellings seem to be a staple of YA books. Why do you think retellings keep resonating with people?

I think it’s because fairy tales are so classic and well-known that retellings always hit certain beats, but the author also has to add something new in order to make it theirs. It’s always fun to see how someone else retells and interprets a story.

Obviously, no writer exists in a void and we all have our influences. What books/authors have influenced you?

Diana Wynne Jones, Leigh Bardugo, and Juliet Mariller are three authors that I read at a  young and impressionable age so they left me with a love of magical houses, villains, and books with lots of siblings.

Twelve Dead Princesses takes place in an original fantasy world. How did you go about constructing the world?

Rather haphazardly, to be honest. I plunged into writing it with pretty much only the ideas that it was a fairytale retelling and that there would be a pantheon of gods who were all dead except for one. Things started to develop more during revisions. I started with questions–what are the politics like in this country? How did the loss of their gods affect the culture? What kind of magic remains and who uses it?–and tried to work the answers into the book.

What’s next for you?

I’m currently working on the rough draft of a new novel featuring a living house, a lot of messy family dynamics, and dragons. After that, who knows? I have a ton of other ideas bouncing around. But mostly, college!

Describe your book in one meme!

Here’s one featuring most of the main characters!

 

I’m so happy I could share this interview with you all! I think Twelve Dead Princesses is super cool (and, fair warning, I’m prepared not to shut up about it for quite a while). If you enjoyed this interview, you can buy Twelve Dead Princesses from the Telling Room’s online store here and add it on Goodreads here. (Bonus: buying it from their store means proceeds go to fund more young writers programs!)

Eleanor M. Rasor has been writing stories filled with things such as magic, dragons, and girls with swords for almost as long as she can remember. When not writing, she can be found reading, swimming in the ocean, riding her bike, or over-analyzing action movies. A Mainer at heart, she plans on attending Mount Holyoke College in the fall, where she hopes to keep writing.

Freepik flower attribution

The Warrior’s Daughter by Holly Bennett: I Really Wish This Had Been Good

Luaine is daughter to the greatest of Irish warriors, the legendary Cuchulainn. Although known throughout Ireland as the most fearsome of killers, to Luaine he is a loving playful father who amuses her with his exciting tales and marvelous feats. When the unthinkable happens–Cuchulainn returns from war injured nearly to the death–it is the first intimation of the hero’s downfall, and Luaine’s first painful step toward an adult life unlike anything she has imagined. As she faces loss, betrayal, suffering and fear, Luaine must find a strength that comes neither from the sword nor from her proud parentage, but from her own courageous spirit.

⭐⭐

You know when a book seems to check all the boxes that appeal to you, but it somehow ends up being a complete miss? Yeah, that’s The Warrior’s Daughter for me.

If you know me, you probably know that I’m a huge mythology geek–the kind of person who read the Iliad for fun. I’ve been interested in Irish mythology since I got a copy of Marie Heaney’s Over Nine Waves for a Christmas gift in middle school. I also recently read the ancient Irish epic known as the Táin Bo Cúailnge, so I was in the mood to read some fiction based on Irish mythology. I also love retellings focused on female characters, so The Warrior’s Daughter seemed right up my alley since it’s focused on the (original) daughter of the mythological Irish hero Cuchulainn. Cuchulainn is one of the most major heroes in Irish lore–think of him as kind of an equivalent to Achilles, complete with the godly parentage and uncontrollable rage–but he’s got a fairly large dark side and I was curious to see him through the eyes of his daughter.

I’ll start off with what I did like, because I didn’t completely hate this book. Bennett’s writing is pretty good at evoking both the brutality and the beauty of ancient, mythological Ireland (though at times her attempts to sound archaic did come off as a little convoluted). I also really appreciated that even though it’s pitched as a book about the daughter of Cuchulainn, Luaine’s relationship with her mother, Emer, is perhaps even more important to the story. Also, there are druids and I love druids.

Unfortunately, other than those things, this book didn’t really do it for me. Overall, I think a lot of this had to do with two majors things: Luaine’s age and the pace of the book. Because The Warrior’s Daughter covers Luaine’s growth from a child to a young woman, she’s very young at the start of the book, which is when a lot of the action of the Táin goes down. And frankly, it’s just not interesting to read about epic battles and tragedies from the point of view of a child on the sidelines who basically sums it up in a few pages. Stuff like the slaughter of the boy troops and Ferdia’s death at the hands of his foster-brother, Cuchulainn, could be absolutely devastating in the right hands, but hearing about it second-hand from a child leaves little impact.

It’s not that there aren’t emotional moments–the sequence of Cuchulainn’s death and funeral, for instance, is really well done–but recounting the action makes it feel detached. I don’t think it would have been impossible to tweak the story so Luaine was directly involved with a little more action at an older age (imagine if she met Queen Maeve face to face!). As it was, The Warrior’s Daughter ended up feeling glacially slow despite having plenty of action, death, and drama to explore.

And ugh, that romance at the end felt very rushed and unneeded. (Also he’s 26 and she’s 16, which…why).

Maybe I’m being too harsh on this book (or maybe I simply feel bad writing negative reviews), but I really wish this book had lived up to my hopes. Irish mythology isn’t very mainstream (especially in America, obviously) and I was really hoping this would satisfy my desire for a good retelling! Unfortunately, it seems like that itch will have to wait to be scratched.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon: You Want Dragons? WE GOT DRAGONS

A world divided.
A queendom without an heir.
An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction—but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Honestly, the best testament I can think to give for The Priory of the Orange Tree is that I read this 848-page monster of a doorstopper in three days. And that’s coming from someone who barely ever reads thick high fantasy books anymore!

Epic is truly the best word I can think of to describe this book. Priory is complex, vast story set in a world inspired by the myth of St. George and the Dragon. A thousand years ago, knight Galian Berethnet slew the monstrous dragon known as the Nameless One and founded a Western kingdom devoted to virtue. It’s prophesied that as long as a queen of Berethnet descent sits on the throne, the Nameless One cannot rise. In the East, however, dragons are worshipped and elite warrior ride them and defend their countries. Four narrators spread out across the globe as the rumored rise of the Nameless Once are brought together in unexpected ways:

• Ead Duryan: An outsider in the court of Queen Sabran Berethnet IX, she’s secretly a magic-wielding member of the titular Priory, trained to kill dragons and protect the queen from assassin. An ICON and my absolute favorite character.
• Loth: A noble and close friend of Queen Sabran who finds himself forced out of court when rumors of his friendship to the unmarried queen. I loved that he had platonic friendships with Ead and Sabran (*gasp* men and women being friends! can it be?) and he was generally a good dude, but I found him a little boring.
• Niclays: An alchemist exiled from Sabran’s court to the Eastern country of Seikii. He’s determined to return home and does some…shady stuff in the name of it. I wasn’t really sure what to think of him for most of the book, honestly, but he was interesting.
• Tané: An Eastern dragonrider who becomes unwillingly tangled up with Niclays while trying to keep her position. There was some GOOD DRAGON CONTENT in her POV and I really liked her development over the story.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m not the kind of person who usually gravitates towards doorstopper fantasy, but I was drawn in my Priory’s promise of a feminist fantasy featuring dragons. And I ended up totally sucked in by this book!

Priory has a rich, complicated world-building that I loved watching unfold. We, the reader, are presented with the straightforward story of Galian Berethnet slaying the Nameless One, but it’s hinted early on that the real story is pretty different. It might feel odd to say that world-building kept me turning pages, but it really did! I loved the slow reveal about the truth that really happened, the conspiracies and earth-shaking revelations.

I also really appreciated the strong place women had in Priory! From narrators Ead and Tané to non-POV characters like Sabran, they occupy places of power in both the world and the narrative, ranging in morals and worldview. It was so refreshing to read a history-inspired fantasy book where women can be spies and queens and dragonriders and court ladies without being subject to misogynistic violence! It soothed my soul. Priory also isn’t the kind of fantasy book that uses historical inspiration as an excuse not to be diverse–Ead is Black/Middle Eastern & sapphic, Loth is Black, Niclays is gay, and Tané is fantasy!Japanese.

Also, the sapphic romance in Priory is also TRULY EPIC. I adored it–it builds gradually and slowly over the course of the book, featuring killer chemistry and some Classic Tropes™ like bed-sharing and corset-unlacing. Truly, the promise of a main F/F relationship in an epic fantasy book was what truly drew my interest because I can think of very few books with one and I was not disappointed. (Please, direct me to the ten-years-later fic if there is any.)

Unfortunately, there’s one main reasons I feel like I can’t give Priory a full five-star rating: the ending. There is so much build-up to the return of the Nameless One but the final battle felt very anticlimactic and quick. Additionally, (and I’m keeping this vague so as to avoid spoilers), there was a big reveal about Tané and her relation to the larger story that felt random and kind of unbelievable. While I appreciate that Priory is a standalone (that’s one of the things that initially drew me to reading it), I feel like the ending could have been longer and stronger. Like, when your book is already 850 pages, a little longer isn’t that bad, especially when it could have meant the climax could be more fleshed-out.

I do also admit that the Nameless One was a very “evil for evil’s sake” kind of villain, but that didn’t actually bother me as much as I expected it would. The human characters were interesting and complicated enough in the face of the rising threat of the Nameless One that it made up for the fairly one-dimensional villain–and there were certainly human villains I didn’t see coming!

However, dissatisfaction at the ending aside, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy Priory. The Priory of the Orange Tree is an addicting, rich epic fantasy featuring feminism and dragons and, truly, it’s hard to go wrong with that.

A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland: Fake News, But Make It Fantasy

In a bleak, far-northern land, a wandering storyteller is arrested on charges of witchcraft. Though Chant protests his innocence, he is condemned not only as a witch, but a spy. His only chance to save himself rests with the skills he has honed for decades – tell a good story, catch and hold their attention, or die.

But the attention he catches is that of the five elected rulers of the country, and Chant finds himself caught in a tangled, corrupt political game which began long before he ever arrived here. As he’s snatched from one Queen’s grasp to another’s, he realizes that he could either be a pawn for one of them… or a player in his own right. After all, he knows better than anyone how powerful the right story can be: Powerful enough to save a life, certainly. Perhaps even powerful enough to bring a nation to its knees.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Have you ever thought “Wow, One Thousand and One Nights is neat, but I wished it starred Yoda and was also about class inequality”?

Me neither!

And yet, somehow A Conspiracy of Truths was the best fantasy book I didn’t even know I needed.

The thing that first caught my eye about A Conspiracy of Truths was the voice of the main character, Chant. He’s a grumpy wandering storyteller who freely travels the world with his apprentice collecting stories–freely, that is, until he’s imprisoned on charges of witchcraft. While curmudgeonly, self-aware, and at times outright unreliable, he was supremely fun to read about. A Conspiracy of Truths has plenty of serious politics and social commentary, but Chant’s narrative voice also lead to moments where I laughed out loud at (two words: fake seance), refreshing in a story that easily could have become dry or depressing. I also thought it was a nice subversion to have the wise old mentor narrate instead of his young apprentice, something I’ve never seen before.

I also adored Ylfing, Chant’s apprentice, and their mismatched relationship. Ylfing is sweet, idealistic, and romantic while Chant is world-weary and grumpy. The two rarely see eye to eye, but there’s obvious love between them and their relationship was probably my absolute favorite part of the book. While Chant and Ylfing were standouts, the rest of the cast were super interesting as well, as well as featuring some great casual diversity (Ylfing is gay, Chant is brown-skinned, his lawyer is a bisexual, polyamorous woman of color and other characters vary in sexuality, race, and ability). Let me just say that some of those characters went in directions I did not predict and I loved it. There are, however, a ton of names and politics, so I’d advise paying careful attention during the first hundred pages or so.

A Conspiracy of Truths is, first and foremost, a story about stories. Sure, there’s other stuff–cranky old men and coffee and the collapse of nations–but it’s really about stories. About why people care about stories. About who tells stories. And about the power stories have to change the world.

While it seemed to start out as a fairly simple Scheherazade-type story as Chant desperately spun stories in hope of earning his freedom, it quickly developed into something much more unpredictable and intricate. The world-building in this book was done in a way I’ve never seen before and I was truly impressed. Most of the story takes place in jail cells (and courtrooms), yet Rowland manages to create a whole world second-hand. From Nuryevet, a fantasy-Siberia country burying a convoluted, corrupted government beneath mountains of paperwork, to the various countries appearing in Chant’s stories, it felt expansive and specific.  Creation myths! Cultural linguistic quirks! Multiple moons! And of course, as any good story-about-stories should, there are some fantastic stories-within-stories woven into the narrative, done so well that I never felt bored or buried in information.

It took me a little while to get into A Conspiracy of Truths since I’m out of practice reading adult fantasy–about one hundred pages for the real plot to settle in and the intrigue to be established–but once I got in, I was hooked. It turns out that Nuryevet, the country Chant has been imprisoned in, is feeling the beginning tremors of revolution. I thought the way Nuryevet was established was really interesting and nuanced: it’s not entirely bad (for instance, there’s no homophobia and there are plenty of women in positions of power), but there’s lots of xenophobia and class inequality lurking under the surface. Chant, as someone who really has no vested interest in the country but knows stories of revolution well, turns out to possibly be just the right person to breath on a house of cards. I don’t want to go into spoilers, but the way events spiral out of control turned out to be timely, amusing, and shocking.

Basically, this book was a delight. It made me laugh, it sucked me in so hard I found myself  physically unwilling to let go, and I’m going to be recommending it to anyone I can. If you’re a fan of clever, irreverent fantasy like Megan Whalen Turner or Terry Pratchett, A Conspiracy of Truths is absolute worth picking up!

Book Review: The Spy With the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke

Siblings Ilse and Wolf hide a deep secret in their blood: with it, they can work magic. And the government just found out. Blackmailed into service during World War II, Ilse lends her magic to America’s newest weapon, the atom bomb, while Wolf goes behind enemy lines to sabotage Germany’s nuclear program. It’s a dangerous mission, but if Hitler were to create the bomb first, the results would be catastrophic.

When Wolf’s plane is shot down, his entire mission is thrown into jeopardy. Wolf needs Ilse’s help to develop the magic that will keep him alive, but with a spy afoot in Ilse’s laboratory, the letters she sends to Wolf begin to look treasonous. Can Ilse prove her loyalty—and find a way to help her brother—before their time runs out?

4.5 stars

How do I convince the entire YA world to start reading Katherine Locke’s Balloonmaker duology?!

2017’s The Girl With the Red Balloon was a beautifully written time-travel story featuring wonderfully well-written characters. The Spy With the Red Balloon is a prequel in the same universe, but it’s a very different story. Set in the height of World War Two, it follows Jewish American magician siblings Ilse and Wolf Klein who are blackmailed by the U.S. government into working as part of a secret nuclear arms race–Wolf to destroy the Nazi attempts at a nuclear bomb, and physics prodigy Ilse to help the U.S. build their own.

And it is a fantastic historical fantasy unlike anything else I’ve read. The blood-based, scientific magic that is introduced in Girl is really expanded on in Spy and I loved seeing how Zerberus and the Balloonmakers came to be what they were in the first book. This book is also much faster-paced and higher-stakes with plenty of tension and suspense. Initially, I found myself a little bored by Ilse’s plotline and preferred Wolf’s, but once it really picked up (hint: the word “spy” doesn’t just refer to Wolf’s role behind enemy lines), I found myself tearing through the book, desperate that everything turn out okay for the characters.

And speaking of characters! Characters like Ellie, Kai, and Mitzi–complex and fierce– were the highlight of Girl and I happily found myself loving the characters in Spy as well. Quiet Wolf, desperate to survive his enlistment without letting the war turn him hard, and genius Ilse grappling with both sexism and questions of morality, were great protagonists and their relationship was a strong foundation for the book. Though I think some of the side characters like Topher or the Ilse’s fellow female scientists could have been developed a little more, I also loved the side characters of Lily (she reminded me a little of Peggy Carter but Jewish/Scottish) and Wolf’s romance with his childhood friend Max.

Also, there’s lots of Jewish characters punching Nazis. And a Mean Girls reference. And non-straight characters in historical fiction who are allowed hope and love. And yell-worthy plot twists. And cry-worthy scenes.

Basically, The Spy With the Red Balloon is an addicting, complex blend of history, unique fantasy, and suspenseful action that I’d recommend to anyone with the slightest in any of those.

 

Diversity notes: Wolfe and Ilse are both Jewish, as is side character Lily. Wolf is demisexual and has a male love interest. Ilse is bisexual and has a female love interest. Side character Stella is African American.

Author/ownvoices notes: Katherine Locke is Jewish and identifies as queer (nonbinary and biromantic demisexual).