Balzer + Bray, 2010
Fantasy
ISBN: 0061747416
384 pages
Synopsis
Part fugitive, part hero, fifteen-year-old Nya is barely staying ahead of the Duke of Baseer’s trackers. Wanted for a crime she didn’t mean to commit, she risks capture to protect every Taker she can find, determined to prevent the Duke from using them in his fiendish experiments. But resolve isn’t enough to protect any of them, and Nya soon realizes that the only way to keep them all out of the Duke’s clutches is to flee Geveg. Unfortunately, the Duke’s best tracker has other ideas.
Nya finds herself trapped in the last place she ever wanted to be, forced to trust the last people she ever thought she could. More is at stake than just the people of Geveg, and the closer she gets to uncovering the Duke’s plan, the more she discovers how critical she is to his victory. To save Geveg, she just might have to save Baseer—if she doesn’t destroy it first.
Critique
I was really pleased with this sequel. It brings us deeper into the world and the unique fantasy elements that have been created. We get a further glimpse into the recent history of how the Duke came to power, why people are manipulated the way that they are in order to do the terrible things that they do, and that the fight is a full-scale war across the territories, not just in Nya’s own back yard.
Nya is fun as a character and although sometimes it’s hard to believe that she’s able to survive many of the battles she fights, it’s certainly contextual to her special powers, so it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility. I’m excited to see the third in the trilogy and how the story pans out. I hope that more of the far past will be revealed as it pertains to these runes inscribed onto these plates of Pynvium. In fact, my only major criticism would be that I’d love a deeper dive into the fantasy of the world. Where did it come from? How did they discover that people could do this with this special stone, and how did that shape their world moving forward up until the present time?
For the Classroom
Since this text operates in a parallel world with separate cultures, societal issues, natural laws and histories than our own, there’s not much to use as a classroom companion. However, there are some interesting parallels between their world and ours, especially references to Saints and religion as well as the kinds of things that people are forced to do in a war that are completely against their ethics. Nya also sites many axioms that she’s learned over the years that are not so different from ours.
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