AR Test – Page 77 – Sneak Peek Books

Tin Star

Left for dead at a space station far from Earth, Tula is focused on getting revenge. Revenge for the beating Brother Blue gave her. Revenge for the death of her family and the other members of the group who had hoped to colonize a planet. In order to get revenge, Tula must first learn to survive in the underguts of the space station.

Luckily, an alien named Heckleck befriends Tula. Heckleck teaches her how to trade with the natives and gives her a desperately needed friend. Just when life on the space station began to seem normal, three humans crash land on the station, and Tula wants to use this opportunity to get her revenge. She soon discovers that taking down Brother Blue may mean the end of Earth. Should she take this opportunity to destroy her greatest enemy or protect the planet that she loves?

Tula and Heckleck are loveable characters that show that friendships can grow despite physical differences. Even though Tula trades with questionable people, she has an honorable code of ethics that she lives by. This code allows other characters to trust and respect her.

Because the story is written from Tula’s point of view, the reader has the opportunity to feel her pain, understand her desire for revenge, as well as see her desire to do what is right. The author uses vivid description to bring Tula to life and make the reader care for her.

Although the book has some violence and sexual content, these scenes are not described in detail, and they are in the book to advance the plot, not merely to add to the entertainment factor of the book.

Overall Tin Star is an entertaining book that gives readers a glimpse into a believable space world, where different species learn to care for each other despite the harshness of life.

Sexual Content

At the space station, two people can fight in a hotch. This is a way to settle disagreements. Tula is forced to fight one of the humans in a hocht. During the hocht, Tula thinks, “I had never been this close to a man . . . his mouth was near my ear, his breath hot. He had some stubble on his cheek. His skin was warmed. His smell filled me . . . I wanted to both pull away and also pull in closer but my eyes kept going over to Reza, who was watching from the side. I stumbled backward. Wishing that I was doing this dance with him.”
When Tula is talking to an Earth boy, she describes, “His lips were just inches away from mine. I was on fire. As Reza spoke, I could feel his breath on my face, and I opened my lips hoping to catch his words in my mouth.” Later in the same scene, Tula thinks, “Every part of me reached for him. I ran my hands through his hair. He smelled kind. I had no words for pain, for despair, for loneliness. I put my lips on his. Our hands found each others’ skin. My body trembled. I had to stop before I exploded . . . I had gone hungry at times during my time here, but truly I had been ravenous for touch. I knew that I would not be able to survive without it anymore. It was nourishing, intoxicating, and addictive.”
When a female Earth girl is trying to manipulate Tula, the girl uses physical touch. “She put her hands on my shoulders. She kissed me. It was a warm kiss. Full of affection and softness. But it was so different from Reza . . . She kissed me again. The kiss was electric, but had no warmth to it. No love. She was trying to manipulate me, and to get what I wanted I would have to go with it . . . After a while we stopped kissing. I held her in my arms the way that I held Reza, but it was far from the same.”

Violence

Brother Blue punches Tula in the face. “He hit me again, and now I was too stunned to scream. He did not stop until I was limp . . . It was only when he thought that I was dead that he moved away from me. . .”
Heckleck, a bug-like alien, uses his tongue that, “looked like a sharp pointy bard” to injected Tula with nanites, which gave her the ability to understand Universal Galactic as well as breathe the air on the space station. After Heckleck injects her, she feels ill and wonders if he was, “calmly waiting to finish me off at his leisure, picking off parts of me when needed.” She then goes on to think, “Maybe this insect-like alien had done me a kindness. After all, I had just thought about killing myself and had been too cowardly to do it.”
Heckleck gives Tula a cloth that contained a digit from someone’s crew member. Tula is instructed to, “tell him to give you the item, or I’ll send the rest of the crew member to him in pieces.” He then threatens to kill Tula if she betrays him.
Tula thinks back to her childhood fights. “There was hair pulling with my friend over a doll we both wanted. There was a slap and a push I gave to my sister, Bitty, when we were fighting. There was a kick to the groin I’d given a boy at school who had tried to paw me at a party. Then I turned my thoughts to the fights I’d witnessed. My father, drunk over the holidays, fists in front of him, always jabbing at my equally drunk uncle, face covered with his arms but his stomach getting pummeled. I remembered the bully from school, Mika, fighting the scrawny Stan: Mika moving quick from side to side while Stan crouched low, always hitting Mika’s spleen. And of course Brother Blue, standing over me and kicking in my ribs.”
Tula and an Earth boy fight in a hotch. They push and hit each other, and at one point Tula, “brought my knee up to his groin.” In the end, Caleb allows Tula to beat him.

Drugs and Alcohol

Kitsch Rutsok’s bar is a popular hangout place on the space station.

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

While discussing the dead, Heckleck said, “But the dead, they have ghosts. Ghosts are very useful for haunting. Never forget the dead, Tula. They have their function. They sometimes speak at the most useful or inopportune times.”
Tula likes to go to the Gej temple. The Gej were a highly spiritual race who are no longer at the space station. When Tula had an item that she did not know how to trade she would, “bring it to one of the shrines and place it as an offering. I liked making offerings to gods I did not know. It seemed somehow more pure. Did the Gej have one god or many? Were they even gods at all? I wasn’t certain. But when I put a cracked gem down or a burned a sole stick of incense, it called me as if I was wishing on fallen and forgotten stars. Perhaps I’d given a gift to a deity who cared only for love. Perhaps I’d placed a trinket on a devil. I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t care.”

Crossed

Cassia has risked everything. The Society sent Ky to the outer providence, and Cassia is determined to find him. When the chance comes, she sneaks onto an air ship to be used as a decoy in a war against an unnamed enemy. However, Cassia and another girl, Indie, are soon able to escape, and they go on a dangerous trek through the Carving to search for Ky and the Rising.

Ky will fight for life and for his chance to find his way back to Cassia. When the society takes him back to the land of his childhood, he runs for the Carving. However, he is not alone. He has his friend Vick, a young boy named Eli, and an enemy chasing him. Ky knows the Society is his enemy, but are the inhabitants of the Carving enemies as well?

As Ky and Cassia search to find each other, the point of view changes back and forth between the two characters. Even though the top of each chapter is labeled with the character’s name, the characters’ voices aren’t distinct. Instead of hearing the characters, the reader only hears the author’s voice.

Unlike the first book, Crossed is not as suspenseful or enjoyable. The Society is clearly fighting an enemy; however, there is very little action. The reader only sees the fighting through the dead bodies left behind. Besides having little action, it is not clear who the enemy is or what they want, which makes it hard to decide if the enemy is someone to feel sympathy for or to hate.

Cassia gave up everything to find Ky—her family, her home, her place in society—yet Ky still doubts her love for him. Ky has a secret about Xander that he thinks will make Cassia reevaluate her love for both of them. He worries that she still loves Xander even though she has proven that she will go to any lengths to be with him. Instead of creating suspense, the love triangle feels forced.

In the end, Ky and Cassia must split up to make it to the Risings Camp. Even though Ky is only days behind Cassia, when he arrives he finds Cassia has joined the Rising and been sent back into the Society so she can help their cause. It seems unrealistic that Cassia would leave Ky after having risked everything to be with him. Instead of leaving the story with a satisfying ending, the author sets it up for another sequel.

Sexual Content

There are several scenes with kissing.

Violence

Air ships come to kill the inhabitants. The deaths of the people are not described in detail.
Ky teaches the Aberrations how to use gun powder in their guns. When the air ships come, they fight back. This is when Ky and two others decide to run to the canyons and try to escape. The fighting is not described in detail, but they hear the others scream.
Ky thinks back to the time the air ships came and killed his entire village.
Ky remembers how the Officials came to take him from Patrick and Aida. He had to be gagged. He remembers having, “blood in my mouth and under my skin in bruises waiting to show. Head down, hands locked behind me.”
In the previous book, an Anomaly killed Ky’s cousin. His death is referred to, but the details are not discussed.
An air ship sends bombs into a river, damming it. They then inject poison into the water. During this time, one of Ky’s friends is killed. “Whatever fell hit with such impact that it looked like it sent Vick flying; his neck was broken. He must have died instantly…I look at those empty eyes that reflect back the blue of the sky because there is nothing left of Vick himself.”
One of the characters talks about how many people in his village have died. “People died that way. They dropped like stars.”

Drugs and Alcohol

The teen and adult citizens must always carry a “tablet container,” which holds three pills. The green pill makes people feel calm.
The society has told people that the blue pill gives nourishment if they need to go without food for some reason; however, it contains something that will, “stop you. If you take one, you’ll slow down and stay where you are until someone finds you or you die waiting. Two will finish you outright.”
The red pill people only take when the government tells them to; the citizens do not know what it does, because it wipes people’s memories. They do not remember the last 12 hours of their day, which includes the part of them taking the pill.
Xander stole blue pills to give to Cassia in the hopes that if she were hungry, she would be able to use the pills to survive.

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

When Ky buries a body he thinks, “part of me wants to believe that the flood of death carries us someplace after all. That there’s someone to see at the end.”
Ky and Cassia find a picture that they think shows angels. Ky said, “Some of the farmers still believed in them. In my father’s time anyway.”
One of the characters recites a poem. “. . . They perished in the Seamless Grass-/No eye could find the place-/But God can summon every face/On his repealless-list.” He then goes on to say that some of the villagers believed in life after death; however, he does not.

Matched

Every aspect of Cassia’s life is perfectly planned out for her—her profession, her future husband, her dwelling. If she follows the path the Officials have planned she will be happy. Or so she thought.

During Cassia’s matching ceremony, she is ecstatic to find out that her perfect match is her best friend Xander. But in a strange twist of events, when she opens a file that is supposed to contain facts about her matched, Xander, another’s face appears. The face of a boy named Ky, her first matched, who was discarded by the Officials as an aberration. It only takes an instant to plant doubt into Cassia’s mind about whom she will choose to love—Xander or Ky?

As Cassia struggles to choose between Xander, who will give her a perfect life, and Ky, who can give her passion, she begins to question the foundation of her society. Is it as perfect as it appears? And can she live in a world where every choice and every freedom—including the freedom to choose love—is taken away?

Matched is an entertaining book that revolves around Cassia’s discovery that her society is not all that appears. She soon discovers that although she loves Xander, she feels a passion for Ky that cannot be matched. The book also incorporates Cassia’s relationship with her parents into the story. It is clear that Cassia’s parents love her and want what is best, even if that means going against the Officials.

Cassia struggles with her conflicted feelings for Ky and Xander, which is a topic that teens will be able to relate to. Because Cassia generally cares for both boys, her decision is that much harder to make. However, the plot does not only revolve around Cassia’s love triangle. Instead, the author includes Cassia’s family’s and friend’s experiences to show that the Society isn’t always what it appears. Unlike many teen books, Match portrays a two-parent family that is not dysfunctional. They genuinely care for each other. The violence in the book is not described in detail, which makes this book suitable for younger readers.

Sexual Content

There are several scenes with kissing. In one, Cassie can, “feel is arms around me and the smoothness of the green silk as he presses his hand against the small of my back and pulls me closer, closer . . . his lips meet mine, at last. At last.”

Violence

In the past a boy was murdered. Although how it happened is discussed, it is not detailed or graphic. However, Cassia wonders if they, “let that Anomaly (murderer) out on purpose? To remind us?”
There is film that shows a, “sinister black aircraft appear in the sky and the people run screaming away . . . One of the actors falls on the ground dramatically. Garish red bloodstains cover his clothing.” Some of the viewers laugh, and it isn’t until later that Cassia finds out that the scene was footage of an actual event.
When a boy is taken away from his family, his adoptive parents make a scene. The father tells people, “the war with the Enemy isn’t going well. They need more people to fight. All the original villagers are dead. All of them.” Then two officials pin their arms behind their backs, gag them, and take them away. Afterwards, the officials make the citizens take a pill that erases the entire scene from their memory.
One of the characters draws the scene of how his village was wiped out by ammunition falling from the sky. “His parents died. He saw it happen. Death came from the sky, and that’s what he remembers every time it rains.”

Drugs and Alcohol

When people turn eighty years old they die. Most people do not realize that the reason they die at that age is because their food is poisoned.
The teen and adult citizens must always carry a “tablet container” which holds three pills. One pill makes people feel calm. One pill gives nourishment if people need to go without food for some reason. The other pill people only take when the government tells them too; the citizens do not know what it does, but later in the story Cassie finds out that it wipes people’s memories.
When a character has an anxiety attack she takes her friend’s “green tablet” because she had already used her own. “Almost immediately, her body relaxes.”
In a dream, Cassia’s friend takes a green tablet, then a blue tablet. Cassie then gives her friend a red tablet. Her friend falls down dead. “Her body makes a heavy sound when it falls, in contrast to the lightness of eyes fluttering shut…”
Cassia considers taking the green table to calm herself down, but she decides against it.

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

When Cassie thinks about how the Society doesn’t have the death penalty, but they kill the elderly, she thinks that people survive because of natural selection, “with the help from our gods, of course—the Officials.”
When Cassie has a choice to make regarding another person she thinks, “If I get to play God, or angel, then I have to do the best I can for Ky.”

Reached

The Rising was supposed to be the answer. It was supposed to be the cure for the Society’s ills. It was supposed to bring Cassia, Xander, and Ky choice. But so far, all the Rising has brought the Society is a deadly plague that has the power to kill millions.

Cassia still seeks to find her way back to Ky. However, her main goal is to show others that they have something of worth—the ability to paint, to sing, or to write. As Cassie tries to find her way back to Ky, she struggles to know who to trust.

Xander is quarantined in a hospital, trying to treat those affected by the plague as well as trying to help find a cure. However, time is running out. The plague has mutated, and the cure that the Rising was supposed to deliver is no longer working. People are dying and Xander is determined to help them.

Ky and Indie are piloting a plane, taking the cure to those in need. However, Ky wonders if the Rising can be trusted and if he will ever be reunited with Cassia. The rebellion has started. But will it change Society for the better or destroy everything?

Reached jumps from three different character’s points of view: Cassia, Xander, and Ky. As the point of view changes, the reader is able to see all sides of the rebellion. Although it is clear that Xander cares for people, he still has very little medical training, which makes it is hard to believe that the Rising comes to rely so heavily on him to find the cure for the plague.

Xander still hopes to win Cassia’s heart. This part of the plot seems forced, especially since Cassia made the decision to love Ky in book one. Xander knows this and yet, he still wonders if they will end up together. The conclusion of Reached, leaves the reader with more questions than answers. However, the book is good for junior high readers because most of the violence is not described and the sexual content contains only brief kissing.

Sexual Content

Two teenagers are having an argument when “over his shoulder he says something crude to Indie—what he’d do to her and with her if she weren’t crazy.”
Indie kisses Ky. “Her hand slides into my hair, her lips press against mine. Nothing like Cassia. I pull back, breathless…”

Violence

When a man discusses his job, an Army officer comes in and drags him away. “His mouth is gagged and his words unintelligible, and above the cloth his eyes meet mine.”

Drugs and Alcohol

One of the characters describes disease-proofing tablets that are given to babies when they are seven days old. The tablets keep the babies safe from illness and infection.
The Society has a red pill that is given to its citizens to make them forget the last 12 hours. Cassia and a group of workers are given one to swallow.
The Society has been affected by a plague; Xander, as well as others, are giving patients medicine and hoping to find the cure.

Language

Ky thinks, “I have to keep running in this damn cure even if it means I can’t get to Cassia as soon as I like.”

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

Ky wonders about what happens when people die. “I don’t know what happens when we die. It doesn’t seem to me like there can be much past this. But I suppose I can conceive that what we make and do can last beyond us.”
Ky thinks, “long ago people used to say what they wanted out loud and hoped that someone would give it to them. They called it praying.”
The Society stores DNA samples of its citizens in the hopes that one day they will have the technology to bring people back to life.

Can’t Look Away

Clothes. Make-up. Her Vlog. Popularity. Torrey cares about them all. While at the mall trying to film her newest Vlog, Torrey and her sister, Miranda, fight. Miranda leaves and is killed by a car. When her sister dies, Torrey’s life falls apart.

Because of Torrey’s popular Vlog, many bash her online. When Torrey goes to a new school, she wonders who wants to be her friend just because of her online presence. Things get even more complicated when the popular girls invite Torrey to be a part of their group. When Torrey begins to fall for Luis, who the popular girls hate, Torrey begins to wonder if being part of the “in crowd” is worth it.

Mixed into the conflict of trying to fit into a new school, Torrey is also trying to figure out how to deal with the death of her sister, Miranda. When Luis introduces her to the tradition of the Day of the Dead, Torrey wonders if there is a way to remember Miranda without the pain.

Even as Torrey’s family is dealing with the death of Miranda, Torrey’s focus is on herself. She feels guilty about how she treated Miranda, but Torrey also feels frustration that her mother is focused on grief instead of her. She also wants to prove to the online world that she isn’t as bad as some people think.

When Torrey begins attending a new school, she focuses on how to become one of the popular girls, and how to hide her growing feelings for Luis. At the beginning of the story, Torrey’s main concern is her image. Everything revolves around her.

As Luis introduces Torrey to his world, one where death is just a part of life (his father runs the local mortuary), Torrey begins to face her own feelings about death.

Luis is a welcome addition to the novel. Besides being a sweet love interest, he is a likable character who takes the reader into the world of the funeral business, which gives the story an interesting angle.

Can’t Look Away deals with the tough topic of death in a way teens can relate to. Although it deals with many teen issues—friendships, popularity, and family problems—the book doesn’t come across as preachy. Instead, the first-person narration allows the reader to see the difficult emotions that Torrey faces when she loses her sister. And in the end, Torrey realizes that true friend are more important than popularity.

Sexual Content

Torrey kisses Luis several times, but it is not described in detail. “When Luis pulls slowly away, I can still feel the touch of his lips on mine.”
At a party, Luis kisses Torrey. “He runs his fingers lightly through my hair. Then he kisses me. And I melt into mush.”
Torrey thinks about what it could feel like if Luis touched her.

Violence

None

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

There is a brief conversation about what happens to people after they die. One person says they believe in God and that “if some kind of afterlife exists, then dying wouldn’t be bad after all.”
When talking about death, one person says they think people can “stay around” after they die. “I think there could be reasons sometimes for them to stay . . . It’s a very small space between the living and the dead. Why wouldn’t there be some overlap?”
Part of the story revolves around the Day of the Dead. Torrey goes to her sister’s grave on the Day of the Dead in order to put her sister’s favorite things on her grave. “Whatever made the dead happy in life, they are to have it again.”

Broken Crowns

Interment is falling out of the sky. If the king on the ground can’t be stopped, he will destroy Internment. Morgan and Pen must come up with a plan to save their home, even if they can never return themselves.

Broken Crowns is the third and final installment of the Internment series. For readers who enjoyed the first two books, Broken Crowns will keep them enthralled with Morgan’s story. The relationships between the characters drives the story.

The story has several surprises and ends with a satisfying ending. The story isn’t as fast-paced as the first two, but the character’s voices shine through. DeStefano creates characters that the reader will wish they could invite into their homes for a visit.

Sexual Content

Judas and Morgan discuss when they kissed in the previous book.
The prince is attracted to other men.
There are several references to “attraction camps” where people who are attracted to the same sex are sent. It is implied that the people are tortured. The prince takes Morgan to the camps and sees some of the patients who have had surgeries on their brains.
Pen’s father sexually abused her when she was younger. It is not talked about in detail. However, when her mother found out about the abuse, her mother used a tonic to “drown her thoughts.”
Basil and Morgan kiss. “Somehow, one of his hands has made it to my thigh, and I feel the fabric of my dress moving up and up and he knots the fabric in his fist . . . He kisses my neck, and I wrap my arms around his neck to draw him nearer still.”
The princess knows that her father would have, “made me have a termination procedure if he’d known about this baby in time to stop it.”

Violence

The king slashes Pim’s throat. He then attacks Morgan. “. . . The knife is hovering over my face, shaking uncertainly, as though the blade itself isn’t sure which of us to kill . . . I grab the knife from the king’s faltered grip and I plunge it into his throat.”
The prince said he was afraid that his sister would be sent to the camps because of her petulance. “I thought that if she resisted, she’d be whisked off to one of those camps and that her brains would be scooped out with a spoon until she was nothing but a blubbering mass of compliance.”
Nim’s father and grandfather are killed, but the deaths are not described.

Drugs and Alcohol

At a party, guests drink “tonic.”

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

Nim burnt his car as an offering to save his sister. When Nim’s sister recovers, Morgan thinks, “It makes me wonder if their god is real. It makes me wonder if any god is real, or if it’s only easier to believe in that than the arbitrary series of events that make up all our lives.”
When one of the characters is about to die he wonders, “if his spirit would be taken to the tributary, or if he’d go to whatever afterlife the ground believe in, or if there was nothing at all.”
The people from Internment believe in the god of the sky.

Burning Kingdoms

They escaped Internment, but will the ground be a refuge or a prison? When Morgan and her friends left Internment, they never imaged what life would be like on the ground. There are many new wonders, but there are also the horrors of war.

Celeste is determined to return to Internment so she can save her dying mother—and she needs the king’s help to get her home. Morgan has the ability to help Celeste convince the king to help. However, in order to help Celeste, she must betray her best friend, Pen. As Morgan struggles to make the right decision for her friends and for Internment, the war on the ground intensifies.

Soon the characters are caught in a trap of the king’s making, and they aren’t sure what will become of them. Burning Kingdoms, the second book of The Internment Chronicles, has danger, suspense, and a new set of characters.

Burning Kingdoms focuses more on the character’s relationships with each other than on the challenges of being in a new world. The story is interesting, but the world on the ground is not really unique or intriguing. The ending of the story throws in some complications—Pen’s relationship with her father and Morgan kissing Judas—however, the complications distract from the story and leave the reader wondering why they were added.

Sexual Content

Celeste talks about her brother. “What would they do with a prince who dreams of falling in love with another prince?” She then talks about how she worries that her brother would be sent to an “attraction camp” to cure him. “There are tonics involved and surgeries that are worse than death . . . If Papa were ever to find out, I truly worry that Az would end himself.”
Morgan kisses Judas (to who she is not betrothed to). “He’s closer, and I reach for his shoulder. It’s jagged with bone, and I’ve wanted to touch it since the night he pinned me against that tree in the moonlight . . . My heart is like this world’s rain hitting against the window. I can’t breathe. I had thought all kisses were like the ones I’ve shared with Basil, that they started out timid and uncertain. But this one goes through the skin.”
The story implies that Pen’s father abused her. Pen feels ashamed. “A horrible thing happened that day. You wouldn’t have understood. You were only a little girl.”
Morgan and Pen talk about Judas’s kiss. “. . . But I realize that she’s right—that something in his eyes when he looked at me, when he kissed me, even when he plucked the leaf from my hair, was wanting.”

Violence

Two bombs land in the middle of a busy city, killing many. “The screams have all faded to whimpers and groans; Birdie is one sobbing girl among hundreds . . . The first bomb was just to get everyone to the harbor . . . All the survivors would come here and be caged animals.”

Drugs and Alcohol

Several of the characters go into a club and get drunk. “By the fourth or fifth glass, Birdie has stopped spluttering the stuff back up before she can swallow it.”
Several times throughout the story, the characters drink alcohol.
Pen spends much of her time drunk. “She prefers gin to sleep.”
A group, including Morgan, goes on a yacht and drinks champagne. Pen gets drunk and dives into the water. When Pen doesn’t resurface, Morgan jumps in after her and finds Pen unconscious.
While in the hospital, Morgan is given something to help her sleep.

Language

The only profanity in the story is when a driver mumbles, “goddamn snow” during a blizzard.

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

Throughout the story, there are references to Internment’s belief in the god of the sky. They believe that when someone dies, “we burn the bodies of our dead so that all the bad in them can fall away, while all the good becomes a mass of colors in the sky that can’t be seen by the living.”
Two of the characters discuss their different beliefs. On the ground, they burn offerings. “If there’s something you really want to ask of our god, you burn something that’s of equal importance.” Once a year on Internment “we burn our highest request and set it up on the wind to be heard.” At the end of the story, one of the characters sacrifices his car, which is his most precious possession, in the hopes that god will make his sister well again.
One of the characters tells a story about the god of the sky. “If people were going to be greedy, he could take the source of that greed away. That’s why it’s against the law for any king to pass a bill that would charge for wind or solar energy.”
On the ground, people believe that Ehco was the first creature of the sea. “. . . The God told him [Echo] that when he put mankind in the world, mankind would sometimes ask the God for things he wouldn’t be able to do. And mankind would grow angry with him—and would grow sad, and that anger and sorrow needed someplace to go, and so it would be Ehco’s job to consume it and keep it in his body so that it didn’t destroy the world.”
Pen and Morgan question their beliefs. “Lately I wonder if the god of the sky even heard us when we were in the sky.”
Pen is reading the ground’s religious book, The Text. In the book, “their god creates light, and the earth and things . . . And then this god of theirs creates the first man and woman, and a page or two later their children are throwing stones and murdering each other. It doesn’t bode well for the dawn of humanity, does it?”
The Text has a story about the ark. “Their god flooded the world to start over. So when their god doesn’t like someone, he tries to drown them.”
When having a funeral, one of the characters is worried about not having a priest. “The priest has to say the burial prayer. If he doesn’t say the prayer, how will Riles be able to get to heaven?”

Enchantment

As a child, Ivan stumbled across a slumbering princess in a forest clearing. Terrified by the beast that guarded her, he fled. But years later he is compelled to return by the need to determine if his princess was a childhood fantasy. Unfortunately for him, she was not.

Ivan is thrown into a world a thousand years in the past. Despite the fact that he is already engaged to a simple American girl, Ivan discovers that he is expected to marry the princess. If he fails to do so, the kingdom will become forfeit to the evil witch, Baba Yaga. However, Ivan must prove to himself and to the kingdom’s subjects that he truly is worthy of their princess.

Filled with culture, magic, and an interesting look into how modern people would fare in ancient times, Enchantment is a joy to read. However, some adult themes make this novel appropriate for a more mature audience than Card’s most famous book, Ender’s Game. Nevertheless, this is an intriguing story that will draw you in for an enjoyable tale.

Sexual Content

When Katerina meets Ivan and knows they are destined to get married, she thinks, “And in the marriage bed, wouldn’t he lie more lightly upon her than any of the hulking knights who had looked at her with covert desire?”
When the king meets Ivan, the king makes, “a reference to the presumed consummation of their marriage.”
Baba Yaga thinks about her husband, who is also a god. “He was the only male she’d ever slept with that she couldn’t kill no matter how much she sometimes wanted to.”
Baba Yaga tells a bear that if he betrays her with another woman, “your balls fall off.” She then tells him to, “Stick to swans and heifers or whatever it was that Zeus had a taste for. Or she-bears. But as far as humans go, you’re mine.”
When Ivan and Katerina are married, Ivan thinks that he had hoped to marry out of love. When he thinks of his marriage night he is concerned. “To bed a woman who was only doing it because her people were being held hostage. How is this going to be distinguishable from rape?” In a book that Ivan had tried to read, the author “had written that ‘all women love semi-rape . . . But the idea seemed so loathsome to him that even if it were true, he did not want to know it . . . To sleep with an unwilling woman—Ivan was not even sure he would be able to perform.”
At the wedding, Ivan is unsure what to make of the guest’s behavior. “The crude comments about how he was going to keep the princess turning on the spit longer than a suckling pig gave him a new appreciation for the Jewish ban on pork. And the children who asked if they could come play in the tent that his erection would make of the bedcovers left him speechless.”
When Ivan’s fiancé finds out that he married Katrina, she is upset. One of the reasons she is upset is because she and Ivan never had sex and people teased her saying he was gay or had a childhood injury. “They kept thinking up some new malady to explain his lack of sexual drive. ‘He has elephantiasis of the testicles’—that was a favorite—‘his balls weigh thirty pounds each.’”
When Ivan and Katerina consummate their marriage, the act is not described in detail, but Katerina thinks about what she had been told. The advice is told over a page and includes, “Most of them spoke of the casual brutality of men, like dogs that mounted bitches, boars on sows. It will hurt. . . One took her aside warned her not to cry out in pain—some men will think it should always be like that, they’ll come back for more of your pain instead of for your love . . . If you don’t make him welcome, he’ll find someone else who will. Other told her to be grateful when he found someone else, because then he’d only bother her when it was time to make babies.”

Violence

Baba Yaga used magic to turn her husband into a bear. “Yaga found her husband tearing at a human thigh. It was disgusting, the way he let blood drool onto his fur, making a mess of everything. One the other hand, the ligaments and tendons and veins stretched and popped in interesting ways.”

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

Profanity is used rarely throughout the book, including bitch, damn, and shit.
Katerina tells Ivan, “Not everyone is as tall as you. . . I don’t imagine you could even lie down straight in a regular house. Not without sticking your head out the door and your ass in the fire.”
The king calls the witch a “great bitch.”
Shit is used several times. One example is when the bear tells Baba Yaga that when he kills men, he doesn’t need a sword, “I roar at them and they shit themselves and run stinking into the woods.”
Ivan thinks he wasn’t worthy of Katerina and that, “the only men who tried to date such women were the arrogant assholes who thought every woman wanted them to drop trou and let the poor bitch have a glimpse of Dr. Love.”

Supernatural

Time travel, magic, witches, and old Russian gods are integral parts of the storyline.
Baba Yaga is an evil witch who uses magic and spells to try to gain a kingdom.
Mikola Mozhaiski is the bear god. Some people thought Mikola Mozhaiski kept Baba Yaga in check.
A magical bear, who is a god, was watching over Katerina as she slept.

Spiritual Content

Katerina is a Christian. She believes in Mikola Mozhasiski and the Holy trinity. “. . . unlike God, you couldn’t pray to Mikola Mozhaiski, you couldn’t curry favor with him, he asked of you neither baptism nor mass.”
Ivan is a Jew who practices his religion. When Katerina first meets him she wonders why a wolf hasn’t sent him on to heaven. Then she thinks, “Well, not heaven. He was a Jew.”
Katerina’s father would like her to choose another husband, even if it means they will have to fight to keep the kingdom. Katerina said, “Father, I am a Christian . . . But the armies of Rome have been defeated many times since they converted to Christianity. Maybe when God has some great purpose, like converting an empire, he gives victory to is follows. But Christians can die.”
Katerina prays. “And in that moment, she had prayed, O Mikola, O Tetka Tila, O Lord Jesus, O Holy Mother. . . then she realized that she had prayed to Jesus third, not first, and when she spoke to the Holy Mother, it was not so much the Blessed Virgin as her own dead mother to whom she prayed. No doubt this was damnation, and she sank down into sleep, into despair.”
Baba Yaga asked the bear to kill someone and she reminds him that he is immortal. Baba Yaga mocks him saying, “You’ve lost faith in yourself. Isn’t that rich? A good who has become a self-atheist!”
When Baba Yaga told bear he should have remained a weather god, he said, “Weather god was never my option. This people didn’t need a sky god. They needed a god to keep winter under control. Like any good king, we respond to the needs of the people. We become what they need us to be.”
One of the characters, Dimitri, has a dream and thinks the Winter Bear has determined that he should marry the princess. Even though the priest has forbidden him to perform the old rites, Dimitri still performs them because the “Christian God had not replaced the old gods. Father Lukas was full of lies. And the Winter Bear was full of promises.”

The Lost Gate

Danny seems like an ordinary boy. He’s smart, he enjoys long-distance running, and he teases his younger cousins. But among the North family, where children are expected to create fairies or speak with animals, “ordinary” is an embarrassing curse. Danny is a pariah among his own family until he realizes that he has one of the most powerful gifts that exist. The only problem is, people with this gift are so powerful that the law calls for their death.

Danny flees his home and goes to live with the non-magical druthers, who he has watched from a distance his entire life. As he learns to live with these people, he must explore his powers and test the boundaries of what he can do. According to legend, there is another world that used to be connected with Earth. Danny might be the only person alive who can reestablish this lost connection, but unknown consequences may be triggered by such an act.

The Lost Gate is not meant for the same age group as Card’s well-known Ender’s Game. Due to a large amount of adult language and explicit sexual content, this book borders on the edge between the Young Adult and Adult genres. Due to this high level of adult content, this book may be unsuitable for most teens.

Sexual Content

Danny gets his cousins in trouble accidentally. The cousins were particularly annoyed because Danny’s inquiry had led to Auntie Tweng finding their files of pornography.”
Danny tries to teach his cousins, but they insist on messing around. “The miniature female bodies they were forming out of fallen twigs, leaves, and nutshells were shaping up with huge breasts and exaggerated hips. Forest fairies, a drowther would have called them. Or sluts . . . all two of the forest fairies turned to face him. Two of them flaunted their chests; the other turned around, thrust her buttocks toward him, and waggled it back and forth.”
A man sees a naked person. ” ‘Is that a dingle or a dong?’ whispered Father. ‘Is he a man yet or not?’ “
When Danny is accused of shoplifting, a detective asks him to turn out his pockets and lift up his shirt. Danny asks, “You like to look at the naked bodies of little boys?”
A guy asks Danny if he is going to, “Look for some nice man who’ll give you a good place to live as long as you let him do a few little—?”
Bexio marries King Prayard. “Prayard gave every outward respect to his wife, even to the sharing of her bed at least once in every month; her lack of children was blamed entirely on Bexoi’s barrenness and not on lack of effort by Prayard.”
When asked to turn out his pockets by a pair of security guards, Danny takes his clothes off and gives them to the security guard. “I’m letting you examine my clothes for yourself . . . so I don’t have you putting your hands all over me,” Danny said. Then he, “turned his back to them, bent over, pulled down his tighty-whiteys, and spread his butt cheeks.”
Danny meets, “a woman—no, a girl of about sixteen—wearing a man’s oversized white button-up shirt . . . and quite possibly nothing else, which Danny found distracting. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, yet felt he had to look almost anywhere else.”
Eric asks if, “girls [are] all born with the ability to rip your balls off with a look?”
Lana is horny and crazy. She tells Eric, “I could have unzipped your pants instead of talking.”
Lana makes a pass at Danny. “She brought her face very close to Danny’s and locked her arms around his waist. Now her breasts were pressed against him and her breath was right in his nose and mouth and her lips were brushing his as she talked. ‘Jailbait boy, why aren’t you kissing me yet?’ . . . she basically rode him down onto the carpet . . . The pertinent fact, however, was that she was straddling him, and he was feeling things that he’d never felt before . . . She knelt up higher, reached behind and between her own thighs, snaked her fingers into Danny’s waistband on both sides, and started to pull down his pants and underwear . . . ‘Help me get her off him before she rapes him,’ said Eric to Ced.”
Eric jokes about bestiality, “Danny’s from the farm, he just wasn’t used to doing it with girls . . . Come on, you can’t tell me you didn’t get some quality time with that special ewe.”
Ced says, “She just has trust issues with men. Her mother had a lot of boyfriends and if they paid extra, she threw in Lana as a bonus.” When he hears this, Danny “wasn’t quite sure what Ced meant. Or rather, he was, but he couldn’t believe such a thing could be true.”
Danny thinks about how stupid he is. “SO stupid that when I just realized that I’d probably get killed, my only thought was to wish Lana would come up here and hump my brains out before I die.”
Ced jokes about ejaculation. ” ‘You know I hate being tickled!’ Lana screamed in his face. ‘Well, maybe the kid hates being half-raped,’ Ced answered mildly. ‘So now you’re even.’ ‘Now I have to change my pants!’ she said. ‘Bet he did, too,’ said Ced.”
A man checks Danny and his friends to see if they’re wired. “Yeah, well, you’re clean enough. You, George, drop trou or I’ll feel you up and maybe I’ll accidentally hurt your nads for calling me a perv.”
When Danny thinks about what he could do with his gates, “he had darker thoughts, ones he was ashamed of. If he wanted a career as a peeping tom, he could do it from his own bedroom and no one would ever know.”
Veevee says, “I’ve never been so happy to find out that another person existed since my mother first put her titty in my mouth.”
Stone guesses that Lana will, “probably become a secretary, seduce the boss, break up his family, and then make his life a living hell till he divorces her . . . But if he can’t keep his fly zipped, he’s the natural prey of angry damaged women who are careless about underwear.”
Danny tells a girl at his school that, “for a girl who doesn’t care if anybody likes her, you sure go to a lot of effort to show off cleavage,” and “I’ll be studying your cleavage all year.”

Violence

Danny’s existence breaks a treaty so, “if he screwed up and got caught, [his family] would have killed him and still would kill him just as quickly as anybody else.”
Danny said if someone was caught fooling around with a sheep, “Grandpa Gyish would have him killed. Great-uncle Zog would do it himself . . . And then they’d bury him in the family graveyard on Hammernip Hill.”
When Danny is burgling a home, he finds a trap door. “A horrible smell rose from the hole. He knew the smell. A dead animal . . . [he] found what he was halfway expecting—four bodies lying tied up on the floor. The man was the one who stank—bullet hole through his forehead, and his body was rotting. But the other three—one white woman, one black woman, and a white pre-teen girl—were not rotting. They weren’t conscious either, however, and Danny guessed that they had been here a pretty long time without water—long enough for the husband to start stinking.”
Eric loves breaking into people’s homes. “To be inside a stranger’s home, while they’re there asleep, knowing you didn’t trip any alarms . . . you can go wherever you want, take whatever you want. You’re like an angel, you’re so powerful . . . Yeah I walked around a little. Took a couple of things. Looked at a couple of girls who slept naked on a hot night. Who wouldn’t?”
Lana threatens to “kill you, you little prick,” with a table knife. Danny is pretty sure she is joking.
When Danny threatens the safety of some mages, Stone slaps him. “To Danny’s shock, Stone slapped him across the face— Danny staggered to the side and he couldn’t help it that tears came to his eyes.”
Danny and Eric are attacked by a criminal. “Eric was right behind him, but then he heard a cry of pain and a thud and he whirled around to see Eric sprawled on the floor, writhing in agony, and Rico just unwinding from a massive swing of the bat . . . ‘Hold still and take your medicine,’ said Rico, ‘Or I’ll just keep smacking your buddy’s head till it pops like a melon.’ “
Eric chews a man’s thumb off. “Eric had twisted himself into position to gnaw on Rico’s right thumb. It was spouting blood, which was pouring out of Eric’s mouth. He had a feral look in his eyes . . . He was growling like a dog, like a bear. Then he fell backward and spat out the thumb. And spat again and again, trying to get the blood out of his mouth.”
Leslie points out that Danny, “could gate your way into my chest and pull my heart out right now. Or squeeze it hard and make it stop.”
Danny witnesses an assassination. “Then he gripped the top of her head and pushed the needle-like blade into her eye, then churned it around the fulcrum of the hole in the bone through which the optic nerve would pass . . . When Luvix drew out the blade, a spurt of blood followed it, and brain and eye matter seemed to cling to it.”
Hull is killed for knowing too much. “She stepped into the darkness of her room, holding no candle because she knew the place by heart. She only heard one breath, one step, and then the dagger was in the top of her spine, just under the neck. Which whack, back and forth, and she felt no pain as she dropped to the floor . . . Alone in the dark, her brain starved from lack of air, and without pain or even fear, Hull died.”
A woman is stabbed. “The soldier stabbed into the cave with his pike . . . Her bleeding body tumbled from the cave mouth toward the lake.
Wad’s son is killed. “He found Trick’s body smothered under the gown of the last nurse who had been on duty . . . For a moment he thought of a terrible justice: putting the body of his son back into Bexoi’s womb, to share the space with his half-brother, only a month away from birth . . . the body would decay and rot inside her, and soon wreak vengeance on his monstrous mother and his usurping wombmate.”

Drugs and Alcohol

Ced says, “I told you to just walk in, morons. Anybody rings the bell, we assume it’s the law. I was this close to flushing my stash.”
Ced smokes a joint.
Eric hides his money from his family because” ‘They’d just drink it up.’ ‘What’ll you do with it?’ asked Danny. ‘New clothes. A bus ticket. And then I’ll eat and drink the rest till I have to start begging again.’ “
A man tries to kill a queen with a vial of poison. Later, the queen uses that poison to kill the assassin’s co-conspirator.
The queen tried to trap Wad with poison. “Queen Bexoi engulfed the wooden doll in unnatural flame that created bitter smoke. The doll had been painted with something, and the smoke from its burning dulled his mind.”

Language

Bastard is said several times. When Danny leaves his family, he thinks, “Well screw you, all you cheap murdering bastards. If you think I’m ever coming back, think again.”
The words crap, shit, and damn are said often. For example, a detective tells Danny to “Put your damn pants back on!” Eric says he, “Came back for Christmas. Say hi to my mom, tell my dad to eat shit and die.”
Bullshit and Asshole are used several times. Eric tells his friend that, “Your stepdad isn’t the only asshole on planet Earth.”
Hell is said a few times. Eric tells Danny, “You must be one hell of a lucky thief to get away with all this on your first try.”
Lana says, “. . . on Wednesdays I’m such a slut.”

Supernatural

“School was something the children endured in the mornings, so they could spend the afternoons learning how to create the things that commoners called fairies, ghosts, golems, trolls, werewolves, and other such miracles that were the heritage of the North family.
People born to magic families who lack magic are called drekka, which is a derogatory term. None magical people are called drowther.
People with magic have affinities with certain elements or animals. “His father, Alf, a Rockbrother with an affinity for pure metals, had found a way to get inside the steel of machines and make them run almost without friction, and without lubrication . . . Danny’s mother . . . [was] a lightmage who had learned to change the color of reflected light so that she could make things nearly invisible, or hide them in shadows, or make them glow bright as the sun.”
Danny thinks about when magical families lived like gods. “When the Westilian families ruled the world as gods of the Phrygians, the Hittites, the Greeks, the Celts, the Persians, the Hindi, the Slavs, and of course the Norse, the lives of common people were nasty, brutish and short . . . The world would be better if there had never been such gods as these. Taking whatever we wanted because we could . . . who did we think we were?”
Danny can make gates in space that lead from one place to another—
A boy lives in a tree for several centuries. “The bark didn’t tear, it merely opened, or not even that, it simply receded so that his face emerged as if from water.”
Danny considers manmagic, “truly evil. To take possession of the mind and body of another human being? That would be slavery. Not that anybody would mind if one of the Family did such a thing to drowthers.”
Danny and his parents theorize that spacetime (everything in the causal universe) is a prankster. Danny believes he serves spacetime by being a jokester and a prankster.
Westilians can create clants, which are bodies they control. Some look like fairies made out of twigs, but some can create “a perfect image . . . Wad marveled at how smoothly and gracefully it moved.”

Spiritual Content

When Danny runs away from home, he steals clothes and shoes from Walmart.
Danny and Eric make money by begging and stealing.
Danny thinks, “The god of these Americans wasn’t one of the old pantheons of the Norths or the Greeks or the Indians . . . The god was the people themselves. Imagine—a nation that worshiped each other. Not individually, but as an idea.”
When Danny finds a family tied up, he calls the police. But Eric says, “They’ll never recover from the experience, their lives will be shitty, they’ll wish they had died, so what exactly did you accomplish?” Danny argues, “If I hadn’t called the cops it would have been the same thing as murdering them myself.” Eric says, “No, it wouldn’t . . . It would be the same thing as never going into the house and therefore not knowing.”
Danny doesn’t kill a criminal, but he allows the criminal’s partner the opportunity to kill him. The partner takes the opportunity.
Veevee finds a gate inside a church. She mentions that if she went through it, then the pastor would “probably interpret it as some kind of heavenly visitation. Those Semitics are so eager to believe that their gods are still talking to them.” Danny says that he, ” ‘always thought their God was . . . ‘ ‘Really God?’ she prompted, amused. ‘A myth. Like Santa Claus,’ ” Danny replies.
A girl accuses Danny of healing her. “Wow,” Danny says, “For a girl named Sin, she’s doing pretty well with faith healing.”

by Morgan Lynn

Visitors

Two Riggs means twice the adventures—and twice the trouble. Now that Rigg has a copy, they have decided to diverge. One will attempt to get to Earth and stop the invasion. The other will explore the wallfolds of Garden and decide if the walls should stay up or come down.

The Rigg that goes to Earth is willing to destroy his parent planet if that is the only option for protecting Garden. He quickly discovers that the situation is not that simple. Earth may be in as much danger as Garden from an enemy that cannot be fought or reasoned with.

Meanwhile, the original Rigg explores his own world. He encounters slavery and murder, and is faced with the dilemma of how to use his powers. As a time traveler, he can change anything he wants, but should he? If he allows people to die, is he complicit in their murders? He cannot save everyone…or can he?

The final installment of the Pathfinder series has everything from Neanderthals to alien races. The brain-tickling problems that come with time travel continue, this time compounded with moral questions. Just because Rigg can save a life doesn’t mean he should, but how can he let people die horrific deaths when he has the power to change the outcome? At what point does free will become an illusion? Visitors again expands Rigg’s world from a few wallfolds to several populated worlds, and provides readers with an extremely satisfying ending.

Sexual Content

Umbo and Param kiss several times. Years later, when they are married, Param is irritated that her husband never asks for intimacy or “even wait[s] around as if hoping.”
Leaky wonders if she is infertile or if her husband is.
Leaky admits she had a botched C-section and was so, “torn up inside the midwife said [she’d] never be able to bear.”
Ram plays matchmaker with Noxon and Deborah, to which Deborah says, “We didn’t agree to mate and make babies.”
When speaking of Neanderthals and Erectids (extinct species), a man describes their mating as “being kidnapped and sequestered” while his daughter insists it is “rape.”
Square, one of the first people to grow up with a facemask, discusses the need for him to mate with Umbo. “And when you take a mate and we find the best way to get facemasks on your babies.”
Noxon is copied, and both copies are in love with Deborah. The Noxon who was not exposed to radiation decides he will be Deborah’s husband because his gametes are likely superior to the Noxon who was exposed to radiation.
Noxon kisses Deborah. “Whereupon Noxon sprang from his chair, took her into his arms, and kissed her . . . She responded with as much enthusiasm as was appropriate with her father present. Which was to say that, upon repetition, in private, the whole business seemed to work much better.”

Violence

Umbo realizes Param will have to marry him or kill him because he could become a political threat to her. “It should be clear that in order to keep you from being a divisive force in the kingdom, she either has to marry [me]…Or kill me.” Param decides to marry him.
To explain Rigg’s face, Ram Odin lies and says Rigg’s face melted in a fire.
Umbo’s father hits Umbo and breaks his son’s skull. “Father began striking him with the flat of the blade, hitting him on the shoulders and the side of his head, until young Umbo hung limp and unconscious . . .‘”I think the skull is broken here. Look how it’s swelling, but it looks dented anyways.’”
Rigg visits a tiny town where a young girl was raped and murdered. “He tried to kiss her and she was still too young and small to put up much of a fight. When he was done with the rape, she was crying and her clothing was torn . . . he dragged her to her feet and strangled her. It was brutal. He held her up and she flailed and kicked, but her arms weren’t long enough to reach his eyes and her kicking him did no good.”
When exposed, a murderer commits suicide.
In one version of the future, Loaf’s throat is slit, his wife is run through with a sword, and their baby is thrown out of a second-story window. Umbo is told that this is what happened as he does not witness any of it.
A man kills Deborah. “He had a fist-sized stone in his hand and he was bringing back his arm and before Noxon could come out of sliced time to shout at Deborah the stone was already in the air . . . It struck Deborah on the side of the head . . . and dropped her instantly.”

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

Shut up is said several times.
Son-of-a-bitch is said once.
Ram asks the expendable if he has an anus and if it works.

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

Rigg and Ram discuss the morality of going back in time and preventing a young girl from being raped and murdered. Ram says, “You can’t just go killing people because you know they’re going to do something terrible…because until he does the murder, he doesn’t deserve to die.”
Rigg comes to the conclusion that while he has, “this godlike power to force other people not to do evil…choos[ing] not to use it doesn’t make [Rigg] evil.” He decides on a course of minimal change.
Umbo wonders if the replication of genes is all there is to life, since “we evolved so that our greatest pleasure comes from sex.”

by Morgan Lynn

Ruins

Rigg and Umbo have started to hone their time traveling skills—and just in time. They discover that in the not-so-far future Earth visits Garden with the intent to completely destroy Garden. Now the two boys race to figure out why their parent planet would destroy a colony they created. Something the Earthlings found on Garden horrified them, but what?

Garden cannot fend off these attackers, so Rigg will have to find the motive behind the attack and change the past to stop it from ever happening. As Rigg searches for answers, he travels through different wallfolds. One is extinct of all human life, another seemingly populated by poop-throwing yahoos and sentient mice, and in a third, the people have evolved to live in the sea. But wherever he goes, Rigg finds people who want to manipulate him. With no one willing to tell him the whole truth, how can Rigg decide which path to take?

The second installation in the Pathfinder series takes the story up a notch. By expanding Rigg’s world from one wallfold to four, the reader is shown several different paths the human race could have taken. The what if’s are tantalizing. The world Rigg explores is as interesting and exciting as the actions he takes. Ruins is in no way linear. Now that Rigg and Umbo are skilled time travelers, their paths jump forward, go backwards, and sometimes cease to exist entirely. While these time jumps may cause one to stop and ponder for a while, they are written in a way that is relatively easy to follow.

Sexual Content

When discussing a parasite, it is said that “the only part of the earthborn brain it could control was the wild, competitive beast, bent on reproduction at any cost . . . That sounds like soldiers on leave.”
Rigg notes that some mice are mating. Later, when starting a colony, Loaf says the mice are “mating their little brains out.”
The humans that live under the ocean are naked. Larex comments on how Rigg is staring, to which Rigg replies, “I’m fifteen years old, I think . . . my eye goes to naked women.”
Umbo explains that when they change something in time, children will be born, but the “mix of genes . . . will be different. Perhaps conception will happen on a different day. Or a different sperm will win through.”

Violence

Yahoos, creatures that appear to be similar to humans with little intelligence, throw poop at Umbo and Loaf. “The watcher flung something out of his lofty perch. It splatted against Umbo’s cheek and shoulder. It stank. It clung . . . it was nightsoil. Presumably the watcher’s own.”
Param is murdered. When she is skipping time, the mice move a metal rod into the space she is about to occupy. When she and the rod collide, “Param felt a searing agony in her throat, the heat of billions of molecules being torn about . . . she lived just long enough to feel the heat pulse through her entire body, every nerve screaming with the pain of burning to death in a searing moment.”
To keep the mice in line, Olivenko points out that the humans “can break their little skulls under our feet.”
Rigg and Loaf discuss the morality of preemptive killing.
When Ram Odin tries to stab Rigg, Rigg jumps into the past and kills Ram with a knife. “He was also completely aware of the knife in Ram Odin’s hand, the hand that was darting forward to plunge it into Rigg’s kidney . . . In the very moment he caught Ram Odin’s knife, Rigg shifted half an hour back in time . . . the knife easily passed between the ribs of Ram Odin’s back and pierced his heart. A little flicking motion and both ventricles of Ram Odin’s heart were split open. The blood of his arteries ceased to pulse. He slumped over and, without time even to utter a sound, he died.”

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

The words “pissed” and “butt-ugly” are used once.

Supernatural

Symbiotic creatures evolve so they can live in conjunction with humans. They attach to the human body and, depending on the breed, can provide benefits such as breathing underwater and increasing a person’s speed, eyesight, etc.

Spiritual Content

Rigg discovers the Odinfolders have meddled in genetic alteration, and selectively bred themselves for traits they considered desirable.
Humans are defined as any creature, no matter how diverse, that is descended from what we consider a homo sapien.
Mice were bred for intelligence, to the point that Rigg says their souls look very similar to human souls.
Param briefly wonders if death is better than life.
Rigg accidentally copies himself by time traveling. Vadesh warns him to be careful or he will “run out of souls to populate these bodies that you accidentally make.”

by Morgan Lynn

Pathfinder

Rigg is as unimportant as a young boy can be. He lives in almost complete seclusion in the far northern woods of his wallfold. He and his father are trappers, coming down from the mountains only to sell their furs. But Rigg has a talent. He can see the path left by every living being that has traversed Garden. This skill comes in handy when tracking animals, but it is not until his father dies that Rigg beings to realize the full extent of his powers.

With his dying breath, Rigg’s father tells him a secret—he is not Rigg’s father. Shocked and hurt, Rigg must travel into the heart of civilization to find his family. He explores his terrifyingly powerful talent on the way, using it to get out of trouble time and time again. But when he arrives at his wallfold’s capital, he realizes that his talent may be most useful in protecting himself from his very own family.

Orson Scott Card creates a fascinatingly unique world. His detailed understanding of physics and his elaborate exploration of time travel puzzle and delight. Rigg’s story is wonderful to follow. It is exciting, dangerous, and enthralling. The skill in which Orson Scott Card builds this world will quickly suck readers into a wonderful trilogy. There are adult conversations regarding sex and violence, but the adult content is not described in detail.

Sexual Content

Loaf tells Rigg that he threw out this first wife when he came home from a lengthy trip and discovered she had three children from three different men. Loaf says she was lucky he didn’t kill her, as was his right.
Rigg hangs a purse of jewels under his clothes, around his waist. Loaf says, “I think you carry in your crotch most of the wealth of this wallfold . . . but that’s how all young men feel, isn’t it!”

Violence

Rigg’s father dies when a tree falls on him and he is impaled. His father calls out to him, “I have been pierced by two branches, completely through my belly.” Rigg does not see this directly, and his father makes Rigg promise, “You will not come look at me, now while I’m alive or later after I’m dead. I don’t want you to have this terrible image in your memory.”
Rigg tries to save a boy from falling off a waterfall. In the process, he nearly knocks a man over the falls. “The weight of Rigg’s head and shoulder striking the man caused his leg to buckle, and the man twisted, started to topple forward. I came to save a boy and now I’m killing a man.”
Umbo thinks his brother was pushed over the waterfall by Rigg. Umbo throws rocks at Rigg, nearly knocking him over the falls. Later a mob, stirred up by Umbo, comes for Rigg. Nox talks the mob down. “Why do you want to believe the worst? Why are you hungry to do a killing here today?”
Umbo runs away because his father beats him, and after his little brother dies he was scared his father would kill him. “Perhaps Umbo was afraid . . . Everyone knew how Tegay beat him when he was angry.”
Loaf met his wife after a battle. He was on the ground with a gash across his stomach. His wife found him, stitched him up and took him home. “By scavenger law I’m her slave,” Loaf says.
When captured, a general threatens to torture and kill Rigg’s friends.
A man talks about his great-grandfather, who was given, “a slow and gruesome public death . . . with his body parts fed to the royal hunting dogs.”
Rigg hits a man on the forehead and pees on the same man during an attempt to escape his own assassination.
Ram Odins’ neck is broken by expendables, machines that look human. “The expendable reached out with both hands, gave Ram’s head a twist, and broke his neck.”
Peasants broke into the house the former princess was living in, and forced her to surrender all her clothing.
Loaf injures a drunkard who was close to hurting his wife. He does this before his wife would have killed the drunk to save herself from harm.

Drugs and Alcohol

Rigg is attacked by soldiers who are drugged to the point of being unable to recognize when they received, “orders [that] would lead directly to their deaths.”

Language

Bastard is said once.

Supernatural

Rigg and several others have the ability to manipulate time to different extents. These abilities are genetic.
Some people in Rigg’s wallfold have genetically induced powers such as projecting a wall with their minds.

Spiritual Content

The people of Rigg’s wallfold pray to many deities such as the Wandering Saint.
Rigg briefly wonders if he is a demon, since he has strange abilities.
Rigg and his friends take a pilgrimage to the Tower of O, a strange structure of unknown origins that is the oldest structure in the Wallfold.

by Morgan Lynn

Take the Key and Lock Her Up

Death is no stranger to the royal family of Adria. Centuries ago, the royal family was murdered, which changed the political landscape of Adri. However, the infant princess survived and was hidden; those who hid the child wanted her to take her rightful place as queen. Now, two hundred years later, there are still some that believe the princess’ descendent should sit on the throne.

Grace discovers that the princess’s blood runs through her veins. If people find out that Grace is a lost princess, the news could spark a revolution. Some people want to use Grace as a pawn, others want to silence her forever. Grace must figure out a way to save herself and the people she loves. Danger and deceit hide around every corner, and if Grace fails, she will pay with her life.

Take the Key and Lock Her Up is the exciting conclusion to the Embassy Row trilogy. The third book in the series ramps up the suspense because Grace isn’t sure who wants to help her and who wants to kill her. The romance heats up, but the kissing scenes are tame and appropriate for younger readers. Even though the book is written for readers as young as twelve, there are some readers that will not be ready for the more mature themes. For younger readers, the content may be disturbing because there are several scenes that focus on a mental institution and how the drugs affect the patients. In addition, Take the Key and Lock Her Up has more violence than the first two books because there are several factions that want Grace dead. The ending of the story is a bit predictable, but that doesn’t detract from the story’s enjoyment.

Sexual Content

Grace and Alexei kiss five times throughout the story. The first time, Grace brings “my free hand up and weave my fingers into Alexei’s dark hair, pull him close, and kiss him. Like maybe it’s the last thing I’ll ever do.”
Alexei kisses Grace. “. . . Alexei’s lips are on mine, and I’m not aware of anything anymore. It’s different from the kiss on the bridge. There’s no urgency now. . . This is about now—right now. No future and no past.”
Alexei and Grace kiss. “. . . His lips are on mine and my fingers are in his hair and everything fades away, the streets and the darkness. . .”

Violence

After Grace is drugged and taken to an unknown location, she escapes. “I just pick up the candlestick and throw it over my head as hard as I can . . . I can hear the chaos behind me, cries of pain and fury and fear.”
Someone is trying to capture Grace. In order to help her, Alexei throws a man over a bridge.

When a man tries to grab Grace, Alexei fights him. Grace watches “him twist, launching himself over the bigger man, and in a flash Alexei has his arms around his neck and he’s squeezing . . . The orderly slumps as Alexei cuts off his . .” At the same time, an orderly tries to drug Grace, and she throws her “hands up, catching his wrist with both hands, pressing up as he presses down.” She makes the man put the syringe in his own leg, and she and Alexei are able to escape.
Grace’s friends blow up a car. “Flaming debris fills the yard. Windshields are smashed. Tires are flattened.” No one is injured.
For no reason, a woman attacks the prince. She “slaps him hard across the face and starts kicking and clawing.” Several people pull her off of him.
Someone poisons the king, and he “pitches awkwardly forward and crashes down the massive staircase. . . (he) has landed, limp and broken, on the polished parquet floor.”
When Grace discovers a secret, someone hits her, knocking her out. Later, this person shoots a man in the chest, “and he drops to the ground.”
When a woman attacks Grace, her son shoots her. “The gun is tumbling from his hand as his mother crumbles, blood-soaked, to the floor.” The woman survives.

Drugs and Alcohol

Grace drugs someone’s tea. When Grace drugs the person, “she slumps slowly to the ground, getting mud and grass stains all over her pretty white suit.”
A guard drugs Grace. When it happens, she feels “a pinch in my neck. I turn to see a guard behind me holding a syringe.”
While walking down the street, Grace passes some drunk people and goes by a café where people are drinking wine.
Alexei’s mother was in a mental institution, where she was prescribed drugs. Grace thinks, “I don’t know what they were giving her at that facility, but I can imagine. I know better than anyone that the medicine can be far worse than the disease.”
A woman is put in a mental intuition where she is given a vial of medication. Grace thinks that the medicine is “supposed to feel like peace, like bliss. But to me they always felt like your heart was covered with frostbite. They made me so numb I actually burned.”

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

None

See How They Run

Finding the truth about her mother’s murder was supposed to bring Grace peace. But the past still haunts her. Grace realizes that her mother carried secrets of her own, but there are those who want those secrets to stay buried. And there is someone who is willing to kill to make sure the truth never comes out.

Grace knows there are century-old secrets surrounding her family. The only thing she doesn’t know is who to trust in her search for the truth. And when a U.S. citizen is murdered on Adria soil, Grace realizes that death is just a tool that a powerful person isn’t afraid to use.

Full of suspense and intrigue, the second installment of the Embassy Row series will captivate readers and pull them into the mystery surrounding Grace. See How They Run focuses less on Grace’s friends, and their absence makes the story less interesting. Grace doesn’t trust her own decision-making skills, and often refers to her “crazy” nature. Her complicated character adds suspense to the story. The addition of Adria’s history and the murder of a royal family creates an eerie atmosphere.

For those who enjoyed the Gallagher Girls series, See How They Run will not disappoint. However, See How They Run focuses on the death of a royal family and the murder of a young man. Even though the violence is not described in detail, the story makes it clear that someone is willing to kill innocent people.

Sexual Content

At a party, a boy kisses Grace. “He is leaning closer and closer. I close my eyes and feel his lips brush mine.” The kiss ends when she shoves him back.
Alexei and Grace kiss. The first time they kiss, Grace thinks, “Spence kissed me. But this is more. More intimate. More gentle. More emotion pounds through my veins than anything any boy has ever made me feel.”

Violence

An integral part of the plot revolves around a revolt that happened 200 years ago. During the revolt, “The king, the queen, two princes and a baby girl who wasn’t even a month old yet. Five of them. They pulled them from their bed, and they killed them.” The family was murdered and their bodies were hung from the palace.
When Alexei finds out that Spence kissed Grace, Alexei “turns and pulls back his arm in one smooth motion, dropping Spence to the ground with a single blow. . . They tumble and twist and brawl closer and closer to the party.” The fight lasts over several pages, but no one is seriously hurt.
When Jamie finds out that his friend kissed Grace, he “doesn’t say a word of warning. He just hits him.” Spence’s head jerks but he stays on his feet. The boy doesn’t hit back and Jamie leaves him with a warning to leave his sister alone.
During the festival, a drunk man recognizes Alexei. Then a mob of people attacks him and Grace. “The first fist that hits Alexei knocks him nearly off his feet. He doesn’t see it coming. . . I can feel myself getting pushed, almost knocked to the ground. I lash out, kicking a man in the knee as he lunges at Alexei. But two other men are already upon him.” During the attack, Grace is stabbed in the side.
Someone bombs a car. It is unclear if the driver was killed in the explosion or if the vehicle was unoccupied.
Someone stabs Jamie. “. . . I see blood that covers Jamie’s shirt. He’s trying to press against the wound with his free hand, but it’s not working. My brother is going to bleed to death, die right in front of me.” A helicopter arrives to take him to an Army hospital in Germany. It is unclear if he will survive his wounds.

Drugs and Alcohol

In the past, Grace has been given medication for anxiety. When she has a bad dream, she blames it on “the meds that I’m not taking.”
During a festival, a man walks by Grace and her friends. She comments that the drunk’s “breath smells like liquor.”
When Grace is stabbed, someone tends to the wound and then gives her “a small glass bottle” with medicine in it to help with the pain.
Grace does not want Alexei to turn himself into the authorities, so she drugs him. “His hand goes limp . . . His legs wobble. But thankfully we are out of view of the street by the time he passes out completely and falls, sprawling on the weeds.”

Language

A character, “mumbles something that I think must be the Russian equivalent to Oh my freaking goodness.”

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

None

All Fall Down

Three years after her mother’s death, Grace is sent to live with her grandfather, a powerful ambassador who is too busy to spend any time with her. Thrust into a new situation, Grace isn’t sure who to trust. Grace has never been close to her childhood companion, Megan, and wonders why she would want to help her. Her new friend Noah claims to want to be her best friend. Her brother’s best friend Alexei says he’s watching out for her out of obligation. Are they really her friends or do they have other motivations for staying close to Grace?

Grace wants to keep out all thoughts of her mother’s death, but visions of her mother keep appearing. While Grace’s grandfather wants her to put on a pretty dress and attend functions at his side, Grace doesn’t seem to be able to stay out of trouble. When the mysterious Scared Man from her past appears, Grace overhears his plans to kill. Convinced that the Scared Man is responsible for killing her mother, Grace goes on a mission to stop him from killing again.

Grace narrates her own story, which allows the reader to see into her troubled mind and understand her terror. Grace believes that others think she is crazy because she witnessed her mother’s death; despite appearing completely normal, she struggles with panic attacks and visions of her mother. Grace saw her mother being shot in the chest, so why does everyone say the death was an accident?

Full of suspense, interesting characters, and plot twists, All Fall Down is an entertaining story that will leave the reader reaching for the next book in the series. For those who enjoyed the Gallagher Girls series, All Fall Down will not disappoint. However, All Fall Down has a more serious tone with more violence. Although the violence is not described in gory detail and is appropriate for younger audiences, Grace’s mother’s death is described in a detailed flashback. Even though the book is written for readers as young as twelve, as the series progresses there are some readers that will not be ready for the more mature themes.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

Feeling overwhelmed, Grace runs from the house. As she backs out of the door, a “hand grabs me from behind” and she lashes out. “A cry rises up my throat, primitive and raw, and then I’m pushing and lunging. Falling. As I land in the rosebushes, I can feel the thorns of a rosebush tearing into my skin, clinging to my clothes.” In her panic, she hit the Russian ambassador, giving him a bloody nose.
While Grace is sleeping, a boy sneaks into her room and tries to wake her up. Startled, “I wrench the boy’s hand farther back, holding his thumb with my other hand.” After they talk, they sneak out of the house to attend a party.
Grace is told a story about a royal family that was murdered. The person speaking says, “The people stormed the palace and dragged Alexander and his family from their beds.” No other description is given.
Grace thinks that the Scared Man is going to kill the Russian president so she jumps off a balcony. When she jumps, “everyone is watching as I hurl myself over the railing. Even the U.S. Secret Service can do nothing but watch as I fly through the air and crash onto the Scared Man’s back.” Later she finds out that the Scared Man was holding a cell phone, not a gun.
Someone tries to kill Grace. “There’s a fence at my back. I can’t move any farther, and that is when the prime minister lunges for me, grabbing my arms in his massive hands, squeezing like a tourniquet. . . I can’t think anymore, so I just start kicking, screaming.” She struggles with her attacker, “when my elbow makes contact with his nose, I hear a sickening snap and feel the warm gush of blood on the back of my neck.”
Grace witnessed her mother’s death. “. . . I am standing there, watching my mother fall, bloody and broken. . .” The person who tried to help her was injured. “Blood rains down his face. His left eye is swollen shut. And the skin on his left cheek is almost black with blood, singed skin, and a rugged cut that runs from brow to jaw.”

Drugs and Alcohol

Grace takes prescription pills that help her deal with anxiety. Several times she refers to the pills. When she has a panic attack she doesn’t want anyone to find out because, “It will be just like after (her mother’s death). With the pills and the shrinks and the looks.”
After Grace jumps off a balcony and lands on the Scared Man, she is given more medication. The medication makes her act differently. The medicine makes Grace shake “my body like a pendulum that can never quite stop moving.”
Someone drugs Grace so that she will go to sleep. After she takes the drugs, she thinks, “I want to argue and demand answers, but it is all I can do to focus on the glass that is falling, shattering on the floor. Two seconds later, I follow.”
Grace’s grandfather “pours himself a drink, I can tell it isn’t the first of the night. The way things are going, it almost certainly won’t be his last.”

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

None

How to Fall

Fraya is gone, but Jess is determined to discover how Fraya ended up dead at the bottom of a cliff. However, everyone just wants Jess to stop asking questions. After all, Fraya is dead and nothing will bring her back. Despite the obstacles, Jess is determined to follow the leads and find out if Fraya’s death was a suicide, like some believed, or if there was something more sinister at play.

How to Fall is an action-packed story that will have the reader on the edge of their seat to find out what will happen next. As Jess tries to unravel the secrets to Fraya’s death, she meets Ryan and Will. Both boys hate each other, and both want Jess as their own. This budding love triangle is expertly weaved into the story without taking over the mystery of Fraya.

Teens will relate to Jess because she is a likable character who isn’t afraid of the popular mean girls or being an outcast. Jess’s confidence in herself is refreshing in a character. Even though Jess is sure of herself, she doesn’t come across as smug. The romance and language are teen-appropriate and, although there is profanity, it is used sporadically. How to Fall is an enjoyable book that shows how bullying can quickly spiral out of control.

Sexual Content

Jess is going out with a boy, so she can find out what he knows about her cousin’s death. Her friend tells her to wear “Skanky jeans” so the boy talks to her.
Someone started gossiping about Jess’s cousin Freya and telling people she was a “slut.”
At the end of the story, a boy kisses Jess. “I had spent days imagining what it would be like to kiss him, but I hadn’t even come close. He kissed me like it was the start of something, or the end, and I couldn’t work out which it was, but I didn’t want to ask.”
Someone tells Jess that a boy likes “dirty girls.”
Jess goes to a party with a boy and he kisses her. “He pressed his body against mine, and with the kiosk behind me I had nowhere to go, but I didn’t have enough air to complain.”
A policeman gives Jess a ride home. Before she can get out of the car, he grabs her arm. “Slowly, deliberately, he stroked my wrist with his thumb, trialing it across the veins where the blood ran close to the surface. . .” He then wipes off her smeared lipstick. “Before I could stop him he drew his thumb along my lower lip, staring into my eyes the whole time.”

Violence

Natasha is upset that Jess has been spending time with Natasha’s ex-boyfriend. They argue and Natasha grabs Jess. “Before I could move, Natasha shot out a hand and grabbed a handful of my hair.” Natasha then tries to throw her over a cliff, but is stopped.
A character retells a story about when he and a friend were being bullied. Eventually, his friend was attacked and broke an arm.
A group of girls was bullying Freya. One day at school, “a whole group of girls cornered Freya and held her down so Natasha could cut off her ponytail.”
The story begins with Fraya running and falling off a cliff. As the story unfolds, the reader discovers that Fraya had been bullied, which eventually lead to her death.
Someone tries to kill Jess by throwing her off a cliff.

Drugs and Alcohol

A character retells a story about a boy that was “smoking dope.”

Language

Jess and another girl were arguing. The other girl tells Jess, “Don’t think you can do better than me at being a bitch.” Several times throughout the book someone is called a bitch.
Jess’s friend surprises her. Jess says, “God, Will, you scared the crap out of me.”
Someone tells Jess, “Don’t tell anyone, but I am shit-scared of heights.”

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

None

The Elite

America isn’t sure if she wants to win Prince Maxom’s heart. The other six selections’ girls don’t share that uncertainty. They all want Maxon to choose them to be the next princess of Illea and are ready to fight America for Maxom and the crown.

When America is with Maxom, he sweeps her off her feet, and the choice seems obvious. Then her heart becomes confused whenever she sees her childhood sweetheart, Aspen. With Aspen back in her life, and both Aspen and Maxom competing for her heart, America’s indecision grows.

America is a strong character in The Selection, but she loses much of what makes her likable in the second installment of this series. In book one she is strong and funny, but in this book she degenerates into an indecisive and, quite frankly, whiny brat. The story is dragged on because America can’t decide if she wants to marry the Prince or Aspen.

The book loses the romance and suspense of the first book. Though there are exciting and fun scenes, they are sparse. If you enjoyed The Selection, you may find yourself reading The Elite out of obligation, rather than enjoyment.

Sexual Content

America kisses both Malcom and Aspen at different times throughout the book.
After one of the contestants gets married, she talks about the first time she and her husband shared a bed. It was, “a little uncomfortable at first. The second time was better.”
One of the contestants is seen lavishing affection on Maxom and kissing his neck.

Violence

After being found together, a contestant and a guard are caned for treason. During the caning, the guard’s back is described. “His skin was already torn, pieces hanging sickeningly. Blood was trickling down, ruining what used to be his dress pants.”
Two of the elite get into a fight. They use their nails and fists causing mild injury to each other.
The rebels attack the palace several times. In one scene a guard is hit by a bullet and blood pours from his chest.

Drugs and Alcohol

At a banquet hosting the Italian monarchy, wine is served. When a member of the monarchy wants America to talk about Maxom, she offers America wine in order to get her to talk.

Language

The words hell and damn are used in the heat of emotion.

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

None

Goddess

Ares was just the beginning of Helen’s problems. The rest of the gods are free, and they have gone right back to wreaking havoc on mortals. Helen might be the only one who can stop them, but in order to do so, she must do the unthinkable. She must become a goddess.

Becoming blood brothers with Orion and Lucas has changed everything. The four Scion houses are united, yet Atlantis is nowhere to be found. Helen scrambles to keep the people she loves safe, while also searching for a way to defeat literal gods. She begins to realize that she can’t keep everyone alive. The only question is, who will die in this war against the gods?

Helen comes into her own in Goddess. She is a powerful character who drives the story forward. Lucas also narrates a bit of the story, allowing the reader to see Helen’s strength from an outside perspective. There is a decent amount of sex and violence in this story. Goddess twists and turns in a way that will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the very end.

Sexual Content

Aphrodite curses a city. She says, “I abandon this place. No man shall feel desire, and no woman shall bear fruit. You will all die unloved and childless.”
The Greek gods return to Earth. They rape and kill several mortal women. “A terrified woman was struggling against a massive claw that was wrapped around her waist. Enormous wings . . . beat the air as the giant bird hauled her into the night sky.”
Andy is part siren, which means all men and even some women are incredibly attracted to her. Andy “had run away from every man who’d pursued her, but that didn’t stop them from chasing. She’d run away from the girls who had pursued her, too, and there had been plenty of those.”
When Helen and Orion are talking, Hector yells, “Hey, Orion? Put some pants on, toss her over your shoulder, and carry her off like a man, for the love of Pete!” He’s mostly
Helen and Orion kiss a few times. “He lowered his head and kissed her . . . she slid her hands across his shoulders and the back of his neck. The only thing that she could think was how amazing Orion felt. Amazing.”
Matt “turned his head and stared at the wall as [Ariadne] tossed something silky and lace-trimmed in her closet.” Ariadne tells him, “My lingerie isn’t going to strike you blind, you know.”
Helen sees a vision of Guinevere and Lancelot. “His hands dug into her hair, sending her hairpins flying and her tresses tumbling down around his calloused fingers in messy locks. His lips nudged hers apart. Guinevere fell back against the flagstones and pulled Lancelot down on top of her. He slid his knee between her thighs, pushing her many-layered skirts up until his hand could reach the bare skin underneath.”
Orion warns Cassandra that Phaon, “only goes for little girls.”
Ariadne and Matt have sex. “As Matt picked her up and carried her over to his bed, he marveled at how simple a gesture it was.”
In one of Helen’s visions, she “woke with Paris’ naked body tangled up with hers . . . Helen joined the memory as Paris was slipping into a deep sleep shortly after they had made love for the last time.”
When Phaon is about to die, he says to Orion, “Why so frustrated? I already told you, you can have the little one, Orion. You know she wants it from you.”
Cassandra, who hasn’t hit puberty yet, “turned her mouth up to his like a shy flower opening for the first time. In a daze, Orion lowered his lips and kissed her. Lucas’s foot connected with the side of Orion’s head . . . ‘She’s just a child!’ Lucas growled . . . ‘I know!’ Orion hollered. ‘I shouldn’t have–I’m sorry!’ “

Violence

It was feared that Helen of Troy was pregnant with the prophesized Tyrant, so Menelaus said, “I will beat the child out of you and love you still.” Then a mob tries to stone her. “When the first stone struck her, she did not cower or try to cover herself. More stones followed, battering her from all sides, until the mob ran out of stones to throw.” Helen still does not die, so the crowd says, “Behead her. It’s the only way.” To which Helen responds, “Yes, get a sword . . . I beg you.”
When Helen of Troy first discovered she was pregnant, she tried to kill herself and her baby. She says, “I tried, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill us myself.”
When Phaon tries to kill Orion, Helen springs to his defense. Lucas “held on to her, even though in that moment she was hotter than the surface of the sun . . . She switched off the current immediately, and he fell down with a scream . . . His hands, chest, and cheek were black and bloody, burned down to the bone by the ball of lightning she had created. He writhed on the ground in agony.”
When Daedalus duels Phaon, they realize, “He’s going to bleed Phaon to death . . . A cut here, a bone-breaking blow there, and on and on it went.”
Matt and Hector duel. “Matt’s sword was buried up to the hilt in his chest . . . Hector held onto his side, still clutching the thick blade that had run him clean through the heart. He hit the ground and his head turned upward, his eyes staring directly at the clouded sun.”
When Lucas challenges Achilles to a duel, his brother wonders, “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

Drugs and Alcohol

Helen finds out that Daphne has been drugging her father to keep him asleep.

Language

When Helen finds out her mother has been drugging her father, she plans, “to kick that no-hearted bitch’s ass.”
The words crap, moron, dickhead, and jackass are used once or twice.
The words hell and damn are used often.

Supernatural

Helen and her friends have many powers. These include controlling hearts, flying, breathing underwater, super strength, super hearing, and the ability to sense lies.
When Helen starts being able to see emotions, she says, “It’s as if everything that everyone is feeling is splashed across their insides, and I can see it!”
The Greek gods are real.
The people from the Trojan War, such as Achilles, Hector, Paris, and Helen, are real and have been reincarnated.

Spiritual Content

None

Dreamless

Helen’s world is turned upside down when she discovers that Lucas, her beloved, is her cousin. Tormented by the guilt of being in love with someone she is related to, and unable to banish her feelings for him, her despair begins to affect her time in the Underworld. Her experiences in the Underworld are so grueling that her friends and family begin to worry Helen is going insane, or even dying.

Despite her failing health, Helen can’t avoid the Underworld. She is the Descender. She must wander through Hades’ world, and search for a way to stop the Furies from tormenting her family. But her strength is fading. Even a demi-god can only survive so much before the trip to the Underworld stops being a visit, and becomes permanent.

Dreamless keeps the stakes high. Helen is plagued with incestuous thoughts and tries to avoid those by falling in love with her friend Orion. However, that only brings about a love triangle. Lucas burns with jealousy, and Helen is still unable to let go of her feelings for her cousin. This book has adult themes and conversations, as well as a smattering of language and a decent amount of violence. Most violence isn’t extremely graphic, aside from the final battle, which will leave readers dying to get their hands on the third and final book in this beautifully written trilogy.

Sexual Content

Castor tells Lucas, “Scions have been plagued with incest since Oedipus. And there have been others in this House who have fallen in love with their first cousins, like you and Helen . . . the children born to related Scions always suffer our greatest curse. Insanity.”
Orion and Helen kiss. “His head fell listlessly toward Helen, inch by inch, until his lips grazed lightly against her own. His mouth was very warm and soft. Like a new flavor she couldn’t quite place but that she wanted to swallow whole, Helen pulled his lower lip into her mouth to take a bigger sip of him. Catching his face in one of her hands so she could tilt his wilting mouth towards her . . . “
Morpheus, the god of dreams, tries to seduce Helen. “Helen ran her hands across his chest and allowed him to kiss her lightly as he spoke . . . [he] slid her hands up over her head, pinning her under him.”
Orion and Helen make out. “He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her. Her knees melted. This guy was that good a kisser . . . He guided her down to the ground, careful not to crush her underneath him.”

Violence

When Castor tries to stop his son from yelling at Helen, Lucas, “spun around and hit his father. The blow was so hard it sent Castor flying halfway across the kitchen and into a cabinet of glasses and mugs over the sink. Noel screamed, covering her face as shards of broken dishes went flying in every direction.”
The Furies make Orion and Helen try to kill each other. “There was blood on her hands. Stunned out of her trance, Helen looked down and saw a dark, wet circle expanding across Orion’s shirt . . . She had stabbed him. And then she kept pushing the tip of the blade into him a tiny bit at a time.”
Zach’s master abuses him. “Zach crumpled onto his knees, all the air rushing out of his lungs. Automedon had punched him in the gut so fast he’d never seen it coming.”
When a child is born with the ability to cause earthquakes, the child is “left on a mountainside to die of exposure to the elements.”
Ares tortured Helen. “Ares hit her face again and then stood up so he could kick her in the stomach. The wind came out between the seized-up muscles . . . He kicked her again and again. If she tried to avoid the blows by curling up and turning her back to him, he stomped rather than kicked. She felt her forearm snap and tried to bring her leg up to protect her side, but that only made him attack her more viciously.”
Automedon stabs Zach in the chest, killing him.

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

The words hell, ass and damn are used frequently.
Other profanity is used rarely. The profanity includes crap, bitch, dick, asshole, bastard, son of a bitch, bullshit, and dickhead.

Supernatural

There are Greek gods, demi-gods, and myrmidons in Dreamless. These beings have an assortment of powers, from super-strength to the control of hearts.

Spiritual Content

None

Starcrossed

Helen has always been odd. Her biggest fear growing up was that someone would find out how much of a freak she really was. It’s not until a strange new family moves to her hometown on the island of Nantucket that she begins to realize just how different she is from the average teenager.

When the Delos family arrives, they open Helen’s eyes to another world. One where the ancient Greek stories of Troy, Tartarus, and Mount Olympus are true. Helen is more closely tied to this world than she could ever have dreamed. She is a Scion, a demigod, and with that knowledge comes the awakening of a myriad of powers she must learn to control.

But along with the Delos family arrives a curse. Scions have been tormented by the Furies for millenniums; three sisters who demand a blood debt be paid. This tortuous debt has cost countless lives, divided families, and driven Scions insane. Yet if that debt were to ever be paid in full, it would bring the end of the world.

Starcrossed is a page-turner that creates a world so wonderful one can’t help but wish it was real. Ancient Greek myths mesh with modern times in a delicious way, creating vivid characters and a whirlwind of action.

The Starcrossed series is best suited for more mature readers because the fight scenes add suspense, but also violence and blood. There are few kisses but a plethora of sexual tension because Helen cannot be with the man she is falling in love with.

Sexual Content

While injured, Helen sleeps in the same bed as Lucas. “She gasped involuntarily as one of Lucas’s hands ran up the length of her thigh and latched on to the sloping dip from her hip to her waist. Then she felt him tense, as if he’d just realized that pillows weren’t shaped like hourglasses. His head jerked up and he looked around.”
When discussing Lucas with Helen, Kate says, “He’s like . . . wow! I could go to jail for even thinking what I’m thinking . . . But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and Lucas and the importance of condoms.”
Creon lusts after Helen. “She was powerful, and yet so unaware of her potential she was nearly helpless. His hands shook at the thought of conquering her.”
Helen thinks she accidentally killed a child molester with her lighting. “That creepy guy . . . remember how he kept ‘accidentally’ bumping up against you and stroking your hair?”
When Helen is learning jujitsu Hector cracks a joke about Helen’s, “prone body and open legs.” Then Claire teases, “I would have thought it would be harder to get between your legs, but Hector doesn’t seem to be having any trouble at all.”
Helen and Lucas experience a lot of sexual longing while trying to stay away from each other. Helen asks Lucas, “Why are you sleeping on my roof and not in my bed?” Later she realizes that “There was a part of Helen that knew exactly how to seduce Lucas whether he wanted to be seduced or not, and that freaked her out.”
Helen wears the cestus, a mythical object that protects her. It looks different to everyone, because it turns into what most attracts them. When testing it, Helen “looked at Hector, focusing on him alone, and she felt her necklace change shape in her hand . . . Helen looked down and saw that she was holding a tiny scrap of lace that more closely resembled diamond-encrusted dental floss than underpants.”
Helen and Lucas kiss. “Lucas caught her and supported her as they tumbled on the wind, holding and kissing each other as he guided them safely back down to the catwalk.”
Lucas and Helen try to find a way to be together without being considered married. Helen suggests, “What if I wasn’t a virgin?” Lucas responds, “We’d be considered a married couple in the eyes of the gods, regardless of who took your virginity.”
When Lucas sees Helen in her pajamas he says, “since you apparently sleep in the most ridiculously transparent tank top I’ve ever seen, I’m going to have to ask you to get under the covers before I do something stupid.”

Violence

Helen attacks Lucas when she first sees him. “Lucas was holding her by the wrists to keep her hands away from his neck . . . if she could get her fingers half an inch closer, she could reach his throat. And then what? a little voice in her head asked. Choke the life out of him! answered another.”
Helen is attacked by a mysterious woman. “A wiry arm wrapped around her neck, simultaneously pulling back and pressing down until Helen fell to her knees . . . white and blue blobs bloomed across her field of vision . . . Helen crooked her arm and rammed her elbow into her attacker’s solar plexus with every bit of juice she had in her tank. She heard the person suck wind and then felt herself get dropped.”
Helen gets beat up when trying to learn how to fight. “Helen swallowed a mouthful of spit and blood and instantly regretted it when she choked on one of her own teeth.”
A reporter is murdered by a Scion. “She was lovely in terror–a perfect, pleading mast of alabaster white skin . . . Creon wanted to hold her like that for days, but a split second of enjoyment later he heard a snap. Like a switched-off TV, the light in her eyes contracted to pinpricks, and then went completely dark.”
It turns out that Helen is impervious to all weapons. “He started hacking away at her. Four strokes in, and the blade was ruined . . . The rain of blows ended abruptly when the sword fell apart.”
Creon tries to kill Helen. “He brought it down directly over her heart. Creon’s knife made a dozen pinging noises as it shattered and scattered off her skin . . . Lucas jumped on Creon with a vicious snarl, and the two of them began to fight so fast Helen could barely see their hands move. They punched and grabbed and gouged at each other, both of them changing from claw-handed boxing to some kind of strange wrestling in which they tried to bend each other’s joins in the wrong direction.”
Helen’s mother wakes up after being abducted. “There were deep vertical slashes on both her forearms that were still leaking fast-pumping blood even as they healed.”
A Scion, “drew a small bronze blade from his belt and slit Pandora’s neck so deeply he nearly cut off her head. She was dead before her blood had a chance to soak into the sand.”

Drugs and Alcohol

Helen’s mom, “Jabbed a needle into [Helen’s] neck . . . Helen felt her muscles go limp and refuse to follow her commands. The world faded into a pale gray haze.”
Helen’s mother is drugged with her own syringe.

Language

The words hell and ass are used frequently. Such as, “What the hell are you wearing?”
Crap and damn are said several times. For instance, when Claire sees Helen fly she says “Oh, damn it. You are a vampire.”
Jackass and shit are said once or twice.
Helen thinks, “I’m not usually a bitch–I’m just super-grouchy because I’m being stalked by three blood-crying ghosts who won’t let me sleep.”
When Helen is learning to fight with Hector, Jason yells, “She’s never fought before, you dickhead!”

Supernatural

Many of the characters in the books are demi-gods and have powers such as super-strength, super-speed, lightning bolts, flight, power over water, etc. In the book, “most of the ancient myths and great dramas are based on real people. The gods are real, and they had children with mortals. Half human, half god. We are their descendants. Their Scions.”
Scions are plagued by the Furies who force Scions from other houses to attack and try to kill each other. “For the first time in Helen’s life she knew what pure, heart-poisoning hatred was. She was not aware of the fact that she was running toward him, but she could hear the voices of the three sobbing sisters rise into a keening wail . . . The sisters were tearing at their hair until it came out of their scalps in bloody hanks.”
When Claire finds out what Helen is, she admits that she, “was a little worried [Helen] might try to drag me off to hell and drain my essence at some point.”
Cassandra is the Oracle. “The voices coming out of her were old and young and everything in between, all speaking in harmony . . . Cassandra’s mouth was glowing, and her hair was writhing around her head like snakes.”

Spiritual Content

Helen and Orion spend much of their time in the Underworld, where all spirits go. They meet Hades and Persephone, and the god of death is mentioned.

Passenger

Secrets are kept to protect. Secrets are kept to survive. When Etta is suddenly thrust into another time, she realizes her life has been based on secrets. In an attempt to keep Etta safe, and keep a family heirloom out of the Irnonwood’s hands, Etta’s mother disappeared into the future. Now, if she wants to save her mother and return to her own time, Etta must find the ancient object that has been hidden for so long.

Nicholas has long been the Ironwood’s victim. In an attempt to secure his freedom, he agrees to watch over Etta and ensure that she brings the ancient object to them. Yet when Nicholas and Etta team up, he soon finds himself drawn to Etta.

As Nicolas and Etta work together, they follow clues left behind by Etta’s mother. The clues lead them across time periods and across continents. As they race to meet Ironwood’s deadline, they realize he is not the only one who wants the object. Can the two find the object and keep it out of the grasp of those who would use it to destroy their timeline?

The imagery and dialogue in Passenger jump off the page and engage the reader from the start. Action and suspense begin in the first chapter and lead the reader on an adventure that spans several centuries. For a story that has epic chases and attacks, the violence is not graphic. Although there is blood, the battle scenes are not gory or over the top.

The reader learns about racism through the eyes of Nicolas, as he struggles with being the son of a slave and a white landowner in the southern colonies. The cultures of the past cause interesting conflicts, as Etta’s worldview is based on the present.

Passenger is an excellently written book, with interesting characters, secrets galore, and suspense. However, the ending is set up for a sequel and leaves more questions to be answered. Because none of the book’s questions are answered in this installment, the reader will be left wondering what next?

Sexual Content

A few weeks after Etta and her boyfriend break up, she sees him kissing a girl in Central Park.
Nicholas explains his parentage. “Nicholas’s mother had been the family’s slave, and Augustus had assaulted her, abused her, and in the end had never freed her.”
Cyrus Ironwood tries to blackmail Etta. Cyrus tells her, “he was going to leave me so destitute I was going to have to resort to prostitution.”
Etta and Nicholas are attracted to each other. “She traced his face . . . He pressed a hard, almost despairing kiss to [her hand]. But when she tilted her face up, half-desperate with longing, her blood racing, Nicholas pulled back.”
Etta and Nicolas kiss several times. “He leaned forward and captured her lips, stealing the kiss himself until she had to come up and gasp for breath. Nicholas pulled her back under, and this time she did let go, only to take his beautiful face in her hands, to let his hands tangle in her hair, around her shoulders . . . he was breathing hard enough that she felt his heart jumping against her ribs, and she knew hers was doing the same. She turned, running her lips along the curve of his ear, her fingers pressed against the solid muscles of his back.”
Nicolas looks at Etta and thinks, “Want. His exhaustion had boiled him down to his basest instincts. He wanted her lips, her touch, her esteem, her mind. Inside her. Beside her. With her.”
When Etta and Nicolas are put in the same room to sleep, Etta goes to Nicolas’s bed and crawls in with him. “He ducked down kissing her, and she moved against him, urging him to touch her, to find the secret self that only ever seemed to exist with him. Etta felt him come alive in his own skin, felt the sheer stretch of him as he moved over her, with her, and she let herself fall into it, dissolving into him.”

Violence

Etta’s mother is kidnapped and her family Alice is killed. “Blood sputtered from her chest, fanned out against Etta’s hands as she pressed them against the wound . . . Her next breath came raggedly, and the next one never came at all.”
Etta wakes up on a ship that is under attack. During the attack, several people die. One crew member falls, “his chest shredded by balls of lead, his face a death mask of outraged disbelief.” During the fight, Etta stumbles over a dying man. “He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t blinking. She looked down, mind blank as it took in the dark liquid coating her skin, her chest, her stomach, the dress. Blood. Her snowy white skirt was drenched with thick crimson blood. She was crawling through that man’s blood.”
Etta and Nicholas are chased by three men. “A pair of hands scooped Etta up by the elbows, hauling her back before she could get her feet beneath her. The smell of cologne and sweat flooded her nose, and she threw her head back, trying to hit some soft, fleshy part of him.”
A man shoots at Etta. “The bullet went wide, striking the brick wall behind them. A splatter of dust and debris exploded into her hair, scratching the back of her neck.”
In the jungle, Etta almost steps on a cobra. Nicholas shoots it, but the bullet also grazes Etta.
Etta and Nicolas are again chased by men. Etta shoots at them, and they scatter.
Someone tries to capture Etta. The attack is described over several pages. During the attack, Nicolas is shot. “She reached out, one hand gripping his arm to steady him, the other going to his side—where a large, wet patch of violently crimson blood was spreading.”
In a final confrontation, a man holds a knife against Etta’s throat and later is shot in the shoulder. Etta and Nicolas are left in a desert to die.
At the end of the story, one of the characters is found. “The face was unrecognizable, swollen and purple as a ripe plum. She’d been stripped bare to her waist, and three jagged stab wounds to the torso looked to be bleeding through the earthy salve and bandages covering them. A thin blanket had been draped over her supine form to protect her modesty.”

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

Damn and hell are used frequently.
Bastard is used in a couple of instances. “Despite the wash of blood at his feet and the bodies strewn around him, his features went as soft as a kitten’s. The old bastard couldn’t help himself in the presence of young ladies, especially those in need of rescue. . .”
Nicolas says “bloody hell” a few times.
During a battle, one man is killed. His dying words are, “Sent . . . down . . . to . . . devil . . . by-by-a-a shit-sack . . . negro.”
Nicolas explains about time travel. “Christ. . . The first time I traveled, I attacked an automobile with an umbrella and nearly pissed myself in terror.”
“Oh my God” is used several times.
When Nicolas thinks, “And holy God, when she looked at him the ways she did now . . . he felt like he’d stepped into the blue-white heart of a flame.”

Supernatural

Several of the characters are able to use portals to time travel.

Spiritual Content

One of the characters describes his parents’ relationship. “Abbi and Ummi were not married—they could not be traditionally bound. It is forbidden for a woman of my faith to marry a man who is not. But Allah in all his wisdom still brought them together. . . It is blasphemous, I know; it goes against our teachings and beliefs, but I accept their choices. I cherish them in my heart. I cannot help but think, it matters not who you love, but only the quality of such a love.”

Prince of Shadows

Prince of Shadows puts a fresh twist on the story of Romeo and Juliet. Instead of focusing on the two original star-crossed lovers, Prince of Shadows focuses on Benvolio and Rosaline. Many of the scenes follow the play Romeo and Juliet. In several scenes, the words of the characters also come from the play; however, the author put the words into a new context which adds interest to the story.

Benvolio is trying to keep Romeo from an irrational and dangerous love for Rosaline. However, in doing so Benvolio finds that he is drawn to Rosaline, the beautiful niece of Lord Capulet. This complicates Benvolio’s life in several ways. Now Benvolio must not only concern himself with keeping Romeo safe from the Capulets, but he must also make sure that Rosaline does not come to any harm because of Romeo’s infatuation.

Romeo’s problems are only part of Benvolio’s difficulties. He must also deal with a demanding sister, a conniving grandmother, and hiding the fact that he is a thief. When night falls, the reader often sees Benvolio sneak into other people’s houses to exact revenge by stealing their possessions.

This book also explores Mercutio in more detail. Mercutio is full of fire, wit, and love. Yet Mercutio’s love is dangerous because he happens to be in love with another man. Although Benvolio and Romeo know of Mercutio’s “sinful” love, they are loyal to their friend.

Sword fighting, thievery and intrigue are abundant in Prince of Shadows. The fighting scenes add danger, but they also include descriptions of bloody wounds, as well as death. The fighting between the Capulets and Montagues happens often and is a major plot component of the story, and in another scene a character is hung because he is homosexual. These scenes are described in detail, so this book may not be appropriate for squeamish readers.

The story also contains a lot of sexual content. It explores the topic of marriage during the time period, as well as the prevailing beliefs of homosexuality. Because of the sexual content and the violence, Prince of Shadows should only be read by the mature reader. Although the storyline is intriguing and the book is fast-paced and entertaining, the subject matter is not suitable for the younger reader.

Sexual Content

The Prince of Shadows steals from Tybalt and then, “The next day, Tybalt Capulet’s sword was found driven an inch deep into the heavy oak of a tavern door. Pinned to it were ribald verses that detailed a highly entertaining story about Tybalt, a pig, and acts not generally condoned by either the Church or right-thinking sheepherders.”
Benvolio’s sister, Veronica is upset that she is being married to an old man. She is hiding from her grandmother because “she wishes to instruct me on the nature of wifely duties.” Benvolio replies, “Shall I go tell her you need no instruction on wifely duties?” Veronica slaps him and he continues, “I won’t pretend you are pure as the Virgin if you won’t pretend to care.” During the conversation Veronica said, “You’ll not be the one he’ll paw in the marriage bed . . . or perhaps you’d prefer that, Ben. Given the company you keep—.”
Benvolio found out that Mercutio was a homosexual by chance. “Walking in on Mercutio in close embrace with a pretty young man a bit older than either of us. I’d heard of such things, of course, but never seen, and I confess to a certain unsettled embarrassment that drove me from them—from Mercutio—for most of a week. . .”
Benvolio meets a girl for the first time. Before she leaves he, “bent over her knuckles and brushed my lips lightly over the skin. I kept my gaze on her as I did it, and saw the response in her. It frightened her, I saw; she might never have felt such a thing before.”
The Prince of Shadows breaks into a house and is surprised to find a girl in bed. “She mimed back a throat cutting, then looked at her bed companion. I admit, by that time I had begun to realize that the sheet did not by any means cover all of her, and though the darkness made it more of a suggestion of assets than a true sight of them, the room was suddenly a good deal too warm…I closed her fingers over them (coins) before lifting her hand to drop a kiss on the rough skin of her knuckles…then she sat up and…kissed me. It was surprising, and I should have pulled away for many reasons, not the least of which was my own self-preservation, but there was something darkly wonderful about the danger of it . . . for a moment I entertained a feral thought that perhaps he might now wake. . . ” Later he tells his friend about the encounter and said the girl was naked, “as sinful Eve . . . and quite a willing mouth on her, too.”
After Mercutio is forced to marry, he writes in his diary, “It is a bitter bed we make, and after, she weeps herself to sleep. I tell her that once she bears a living heir she can be shut of me…Men say that love is cruel, but it is the lack of it in the act that is cruelest.”
While Benvolio is with Rosaline, he thinks, “I wanted her, a Capulet, in ways that I had never wanted a woman before—not a hasty, impersonal fumbling in the dark, not the duty of a cold husband with an unfamiliar wife . . . something else, for the sake of passion, and fire, and challenge.”
When Romeo is looking for Rosaline, Mercutio asks, “So eager to deflower the girl? ‘Tis the job your grandmother set you, or missed you her message? Humiliate Capulet by showing that their precious convent-bound virgin is a trull.”
Benvolio thinks about Mercutio’s marriage and how “girls of means were sold or bartered.” Mercutio’s father would make sure Mercutio was married. Benvolio thinks, “I did not like to think on that unhappy wedding night. If it was consummated at all, it would be done coldly and ruthlessly.”
Benvolio was talking to Rosaline when his hand, “moved from her wrist, glided up her arm, and now it touched her cheek . . . I felt drugged with the tingles of pleasure of my skin on hers…My fingers trailed down, tracked the tight line of her jaw, and I felt the fast beat of her pulse.” Rosaline then backs away. Later during the conversation, Benvolio wonders, “would she resist me if I took hold of her, kissed her, bore her back to that curtained mattress? Would she cry for help, or would she sigh my name, rise to meet me, crave the same senseless release that I did?”

Violence

In one scene, Benvolio thinks about a bedtime story about a Capulet named Sophia. “The gruesome horror of being bricked up in a lavishly appointed room, with only a pitcher of water and a dagger for company. Once the water had gone, Sophia more than likely would have sought the dagger’s point for her final comfort . . .”
When Veronica threatens to hint that Benvolio is a homosexual, he reminds her about the boy, “they hanged last winter. Claiming someone a sodomite is no joking matter.”
When Benvolio sneaks into Rosaline’s room he thinks she is asleep, but then he, “felt the ice-cold prickle of a blade on the back of my neck.” Rosaline tells Benvolio must leave, but before he can Tybalt hears them talking and advances on her. Tybalt grabs her arm and twists it until she cries out. When she refuses to answer Tybalt’s questions that, “earned her an openhanded slap hard enough to leave a blood red imprint on her fair skin.” Later than evening Benvolio (in disguise) and Friar Lawrence go to check on Rosaline and find her, “wedged into a cold corner, knees drawn up, nightgown bloodied from her split lip and the open cut on her forehead. It would take time for the bruises to form, but her left eye was already swollen, and the right side of her jaw distorted from the beating she’d received. She held her right arm tenderly, and I saw the bloody scrapes on her knuckles.”
Rosaline writes about the abuse of Tybalt. “Of late, I have begun to fight back, since I had come into a height where it was possible—though strictly forbidden—to do so. I had scored him with my nails more than once, and even bruised him, but never did I hurt him enough to matter.”
There is a sword fight between a “Capulet pig” and Benvolio. In the end, “the sword plunged easily just below the ridge of his collarbone, angling down as the dagger found ribs and angled up . . . The two points almost meet at his heart . . . So I waited until the life had left the man’s eyes and he fell to the cobblestones, kicked his Capulet-given sword to the side, and turned just as the second man drove Bathasar back at the point of his blade.”
There is a sword fight between Tybalt and Benvolio. Several others join the fray. Benvolio thinks, “I wanted his blood, badly as he wanted mine.” The fight is interrupted by the elder Capulet and Montague and no one is injured.
Mercutio’s lover is, “on his knees, with his hands bound roughly behind his back, and a circle of armed men surrounded him.” Mercutio’s father then proceeds to beat him. “I was not sure if he could see through the torrents of blood that obscured his face.” Mercutio’s father then makes sure Mercutio watches his lover be hung from a tree. “Though his toes kicked just a few inches above the ground, it was enough . . . It took a horribly long time to be finished.”
Benvolio reflects on the above incident, thinking, “I thought I’d known the depths of cruelty men hide, but this . . . this was another thing entirely. I’d known all our lives that we were fragile, easily punctured flesh, but seeing the boy choke on that noose, seeing the laughter and jeers from those who’d killed him . . . hearing the thumps as rocks pelted his dying body . . . had shattered something within me . . .”
When Benvolio overhears his sister gossiping about Mercutio’s lover, he grabs “her by the back of the neck and dragged her squealing around the corner.” They argue and he lets her go.
Mercutio has a fight in a tavern. “He was spattered with fresh red, and his dagger ran with it, and the floor was thick with writhing, groaning men.”
Benvolio is in a sword fight and his, “blade slipped easily in, though, and I cut sideways to open the vessels. Blood gushed like a fountain, sheeting gory down his hose, and he let out a short, sharp cry as he fell to his uninjured knee. It was a killing wound, and he knew it instantly.”
Another sword fight happens, and Tybalt kills Mercutio. Tybalt, “yanked his blade free of my friend’s ribs. It slid out with a terrible sound, steel grating bone, and the blood that spouted out was the exact shade of Capulet livery…my ears seemed tuned only to the sound of Mercutio’s tortured, hitching breaths, and the pulse of his blood flowing to the stones.”
Romeo, Tybalt, Benvolio, and others get into a sword fight. Several people are killed. Benvolio, “stabbed him in the throat and ended him.” In the same fight, Romeo stabs Tybalt. “For an instant, the cut looked small, but then it parted, and the blood, oh, the blood. He fell into the arms of his adherents, thrashing in his death agonies.”
In another scene the Capulets and Montagues fight, which takes place over several pages. “The cobbles were already wet with blood, and bodies fell to my left under a strong assault . . . my sword slid between his ribs and out his heart, and he was down, grimacing now.” During this fight, Veronica is killed and the boy who killed her is dragged away to be hung.
When a priest discovers Benvolio is the Prince of Shadows, the priest gave, “a blow with his closed fist . . . his servants, as expected, took this as a sign, and instead of ripping away my mask, they closed in, fists flying as they screamed curses upon me for my insolence. I hunched in to try to ride the blows, but soon I was on my side, and the rope had been pulled tight. Air had become a frantic struggle, and I was all but senseless when I felt fingers tugging at the silk knotted around my face. It was wet with blood . . .” By the time the mask is pulled away, Benvolio’s face is so bloody and swollen that he is unrecognizable.

Drugs and Alcohol

The characters in the book are often seen drinking and in a state of drunkenness. For example, on the first page of the book Tybalt is described as, “a drunken, undignified mess in sodden linen.” Later on in the story, Benvolio, “quaffed my wine in a choking gulp.”
There are several references to drunkenness. In one scene, Rosaline said, “I dismissed the tales of you as drunkard’s gossip.” In another scene, Benvolio, “stumbled to a halt, as unsteady as if I’d been into Tybalt’s wine cellar instead of his apartments.”
Benvolio asks the friar, “Have you been into the sacramental wine again, Friar Lawrence?” Benvolio thinks, “It was obvious indeed from the eloquence of his breath.”

Language

In a conversation about the Prince’s new mistress, the mistress is described as, “a woman no better than a whore.” Later in that same conversation, Benvolio’s grandmother said, “It isn’t healthy for a strapping young man to be introduced to whores at your age, before you’ve even settled on a wife.”
Trying to start a fight, a man calls Benvolio a, “Mongrel son of an English bitch.”

Supernatural

There is a “witch” who Mercutio’s wife seeks out, hoping for a potion that will help her get pregnant. Later, Mercutio sees the same witch who helps him curse those who betrayed him.
When Benvolio tracks down the witch, she explains the spell she gave Mercutio was made of three parts— “one faith, one mind, one flesh.” Part of the spell was cast by writing on Mercutio’s skin. “For the mind, it wrote down in his own hand . . . The other . . . the other was cast upon rosary beads.”
At the end of the story, the curse affects Benvolio and Rosaline. Because of the curse, they seek “comfort in each other’s bodies, heedless of consequences.” They fight to ensure they do not fall to the curse’s allure. In the end, Benvolio has to destroy the rosary that has been cursed. In order to do this Benvolio must, “thrust my whole hand into the flames. /The agony hit in an instant…I heard flesh sizzle.”
Mercutio and Romeo appear as ghosts at the end of the story.

Spiritual Content

Benvolio’s grandmother said it is good that he will be married soon because, “all men’s blood runs too hot, and the apostle said that it is better to marry than to burn.”
Mercutio is secretly in love. His love is, “not simply unwise, but reckoned unnatural by Church and law alike.”
Friar Lawrence questions Lady Capulet about Rosaline’s injures asking if violence was necessary. Lady Capulet said, “The scriptures tell us that a disobedient child should be corrected; is it not so?” Later in the chapter, Friar Lawrence said, “You were right to fear for her, but with God’s grace we may have saved her life. Her lady aunt will not wish to have Rosaline murdered this night; they might be within their right to so dispose of a rebellious girl-child, but they have not the liver for questions the Church must bring.”
Benvolio prays to the beloved Virgin, “for patience, guidance, and most of all, for my cousin to stop loving Rosaline Capulet.”
Benvolio goes to church looking for someone, “in the confessional…but I found that it must have been a busy morning for sinning. At least ten aspired to cleanse their souls before me.”
When Benvolio finds out that his sister has betrayed Mercutio’s secret, he thinks, “God does answer all prayers, but sometimes, he answers with a cold and remorseless denial…”
After Mercutio’s father beats him, no one is allowed to tend to Mercutio’s wounds. The next day, his father said, “You live to see the dawn, then. It is a sign from God that even He does not want you…Give up your sinful perversions, and embrace a life of piety and duty to your family.”
In reference to Mercutio, a character said, “I believe God loves all, sinners and saints, and judgment is His business, not mine.”
Benvolio’s sister, Veronica, writes in her diary that, “God wills that these vile, unnatural sinners [homosexuals] be condemned and cast out, and whatever Benvolio believes (heretic that he is), I believe that I did God’s business in whispering of the assignation—still best to blame fall on the Capulet whore, for safety’s sake, for Mercutio makes a bad enemy.”
Friar Lawrence marries Romeo and Juliet because, “their love was so strong that if I had refused to bless it, it would have been done without God’s seal; there is no doubt of it. Would you have me step aside and allow the sin instead?”
When Benvolio discusses Mercutio’s homosexuality, he says Mercutio, “was as he was formed, as God made him.”

Terrier

Beka lives in the Lower City, the roughest part of Corus. She is a Puppy, training to be one of the Dogs, those who police the streets and try to keep the Rats from causing too much hurt. The job is a deadly one and undesirable to most. But being a Dog is in Beka’s blood, and she will do everything in her power to protect the people of the Lower City–her people.

Terrier is the beginning of a trilogy, but each book is self-sufficient. This series is not like Pierce’s other books. It is an excellent and entertaining story, with heaps of action and convoluted plots that will reveal an unexpected ending. However, this series is meant for a more mature audience than the majority of Pierce’s novels. There is a decent amount of profanity as well as more sexual content. As Beka is a guardswoman, the majority of her job involves her capturing and fighting with criminals. While the fights and sexual content are not graphically described, they are plentiful.

Sexual Content

Beka sees a woman and notes that “there was a twitch to her hips. I’d wager she’d give her husband an extra-warm night, thinking of the tall Dog who had flirted with her.”
Beka calls her breasts peaches. When describing herself, she says, “My peaches are well enough. Doubtless they would be larger if I put on more pounds, but as I have no sweetheart and am not wishful of one for now, my peaches are fine as they are.”
There is a mage who works at the Kennel, who has “roaming hands, with their pinching and stroking fingers . . . Quick as a snake, Fulk grabbed my wrist. He smiled into my eyes, his fingers rubbing my arm.”
Beka accidentally lets her neighbor see her half-dressed. “I blinked at Rosto. Trouble has just moved in, I thought. Then I remembered I stood there in no more than breastband and breeches. I shrieked and slammed my door.”
Beka sees a male prostitute. “He beckoned to me, flexing hard chest muscles. I looked away. It was a very tight loincloth.”
Rostro has two girls he is intimate with at one point, which Beka and Ersken discuss briefly. “‘And he’s got Aniki or Kora.’ ‘I’d say both.’ ‘That’s his business, Ersken.'”
While Beka says she will never get involved with Rosto, she admits, “He makes my skin, my peaches, and my other parts tingle in an agreeable way. Naught will come of it.”
Beka goes to a tavern while pursuing a case. “That same knight beckoned to a serving maid as the two noblemen seated themselves. She thrust the neck of her dress lower, when it already did little enough to cover her peaches.” Later some men “made a game of looking under tables, benches, and the mots’ skirts. More than a few earned cuffs and boxed ears from the mots who objected.”
A knight notices a prostitute at a tavern. “The wench who’d gotten his attention was one of the higher-priced doxies there, wearing a dress and earrings that did not come from Cheappretty Row.” His friend says he “is all kinds of fat in the purse, and he loves to pay double when he’s happy.”
Beka finds her neighbor in “only her shift, though the day was cool and rainy. Moreover, I saw Ersken pulling on his breeches behind her . . . ‘I’m my own mot and can say who shares my bed,’ Kora told me. ‘Rosto knows.’ She smiled. ‘We’re still friends, just not bed friends.'”
Goodwin finds a coil of wire hidden in a codpiece. “She reached around the rusher and grabbed his metal codpiece. “‘Oh, sweet one,’ the cove said with a moan, ‘my lovey, my–’ ‘Shut up.’ Goodwin yanked the codpiece hard.”
A criminal tells Tunstall, “Pox on yer privates if ye think I’ve a word for ye.”
Kora kisses her boyfriend. “Then she kissed him again for a goodlytime. I grabbed the ham, as it seemed they would be occupied for a while.”
Rosto kisses Beka. He “grabbed me by the back of the neck, and kissed me on the mouth. I should have punched him, but his mouth was sweet and soft. I will punch him next time.”

Violence

Goodwin is attacked while trying to make an arrest. “Orva struck backhand, her fist turned sideways. She caught Goodwin with the butt of the hilt square on the hinge of the jaw. Goodwin dropped, her eyes rolled up in her head.”
Goodwin tells Beka they can’t catch every Rat. “Do you know how many robberies there are in a day in the Lower City, how many burglaries, how many purse cuttings, rapes, brawls . . . Do you know how many mothers drown newborns and tots in privies or rain barrels? How many fathers and uncles toss them into the rear yard with broken skulls?”
Beka has to break up a tavern brawl while on duty. “Someone pushed me against a table. I smashed him across the head hard, then shoved him behind me. I heard him smack into furniture . . . I finally remembered Ahuda’s teaching and fought my way to a wall.”
Beka and her partners break up a fight. “He roared and charged Tunstall, head down. Tunstall turned to the side and swung up his bent knee. He caught the charging Parks brother on the chin . . . He never saw me smack his wrist with my baton. When he dropped the weapon, he bent to grab it. I hit him on the spine, praying I hadn’t done it too hard.”
The Rogue mentions he will give his guards “a choice between death and life as a maimed beggar” after they failed him.
Beka sees a woman being abused by her brother. “He knocked her sideways, sending her sprawling on the floor. Now I knew where her bruises came from.” Beka stops him from hitting her, too. “I blocked his swing with my forearm, though it jarred my teeth. While he gaped, I grabbed that wrist with my free left hand and yanked him toward me over the counter . . . When he grabbed at me with his free hand, I seized it and twisted so he’d stop thrashing.”
A woman confesses that “I tried to get my man to move in . . . but he wouldn’t allow for it. Said he wasn’t meant to live with little ones. So one night I took the blanket and I put it over my boy’s face until he stopped breathin’.”
Beka and her team stop a robbery. “I scooped my own kick forward and up, between his legs, and slammed a metal codpiece with my foot. Had it been solid metal, not pieces, I might’ve hurt myself. Instead it gave way under my kick. The rusher groaned, his eyes rolling up in his head. I hadn’t seen him draw a dagger with his free hand. It slid just past my right side, slicing my loose tunic and shirt.”
When Beka deals with a criminal, “He slapped me. I didn’t try to stop him this time. I wasn’t sure I would break his arm. I had to be better than him.” The criminal tells her, “I’ll see you raped and your body left in a midden, your throat cut in two.”
Beka and a team of Dogs storm a house. “The cove didn’t even see Goodwin lunge in under his strike. She struck him full in the belly with her baton. He doubled over, retching. She knocked him out.”
Beka and her Dogs find multiple mass graves. “Half of the cellar was under a huge mound of dirt. I gagged. The smell was dreadful, like a Cesspool butcher’s dump in the summer heat . . . We worked gently, fearing what we might hit. I’d just felt the tip of my shovel touch sommat when we heard wings in that hot space . . . We found eight dead there.”
When Beka and her Dogs corner a criminal, “He thrust the dagger into his throat under his jaw. He did it before we could move, and no amount of healing could have saved him. He bled to death fast, making a frightful mess.”

Drugs and Alcohol

Tunstall goes out to dinner with some other adults. “So the wine was flowing well, and there was brandy after supper.”
While Beka does not usually partake, her partners and friends often drink ale with their suppers.
Beka writes once, “I fere I broke my rule and Dranke more wine thann I shud.”
A Puppy dies, and it is said that one of her trainers was drunk on duty when it happened.

Language

The words “piss,” “piddle,” and “scummer” are used often.
Insults such as “pig scummer,” “cracknob” and other impolite, but not profane, words are used. Beka calls a group of lazy Dogs, “scummernobs.” When particularly angry, she once says “pox-rotted pus-leaking mumper bags.”
Beka tells her friend that she is “making an ass of yourself.”
A violent woman that Beka arrested shouts at her. “You bitch! . . . You puttock, you trollop, you trull . . . I’ll cut your liver out, you poxied leech! Why wouldn’t you let me go! You ruined my life!”
The words “bitch” and “bastard” are used a few times. A criminal calls Goodwin a “mangy bitch,” and Beka thinks “I needed to catch up with the old bastard” when she’s following a criminal.
A criminal calls her daughter a “slut.”

Supernatural

Beka has a magical cat. ” ‘We’re not even sure he’s a cat,’ Tunstall muttered to Goodwin. ‘I say he’s a god shape-changed.’ Pounce meowed, Do I look as stupid as a god to you?
Beka has the magical Gift. Many people have this magic, which can be used for fighting, controlling the weather, or healing. Beka’s brand of magic lets her hear voices picked up by wind spinners, and allows her to hear unhappy spirits that are carried on the backs of pigeons before they go to the Black God’s realm.
Beka helps a mother speak to her son and aid him in crossing over. “‘Sweetheart, of course the Black God has birds,’ Tansy whispered, straightening. ‘Beautiful ones. But you won’t see them if you stay where it’s dark. You have to go to the Peaceful Realms.'”

Spiritual Content

There are many gods in Tortall, such as the Crooked God, Mithros and the Black God. Different people honor different gods. Their names are often invoked in daily conversation as exclamations of surprise or relief. One woman, when exhausted, exclaims “Thank the Goddess . . . I’m weary to death!” When Beka brings in a Rat, Ahuda exclaims, “Great Mithros bless us, you actually caught “
Goodwin tells Beka to toughen up “before you jump into the Olorun or slice your wrists. We lose five Dogs a year to the Black God’s Option. Don’t you be one.”
Farewells sometimes have the name of the gods in them. ” ‘Mithros and the Crone watch over you.’ I curtsied as he went inside. ‘Gods all bless and keep you, my lord.’ I whispered.”
A friend of Beka’s deceased mother asks if she “burn(s) the incense for Ilony’s ghost?” Beka says she does.

by Morgan Lynn

Mastiff

Pierce once again expands Beka’s world by bringing her into the exclusive circle of royalty. Caught up in intrigues and politics, the royal family experiences a tragedy of unparalleled circumstances and reaches out to Beka for help. Along with Tunstall and Achoo, the weight of the realm is on Beka’s shoulders. Struggling against enraged mages and ambitious nobles, Beka and her team are all that might prevent the end of Tortall. While success may save the kingdom, it will cost Beka more than she could imagine.

Mastiff leaps into an interesting scenario, dropping hints about Beka’s personal life that will intrigue readers. Achoo is a sweet hound and Pounce, a talking cat, is delightfully sassy. However, what starts off as an interesting and exciting story quickly lapses into a long journey, with little to break up the monotony. While the middle of the book has readers turning pages out of loyalty to Beka, and little else, the final chapters arrive with a startling twist and heartwarming ending.

Sexual Content

Beka “went to him and kissed his cheek. ‘Thank you, Rosto. You’re a good friend.’”
When Beka meets the king, “all I could think as I stood there was the jokes from the days before his second marriage. ‘Randy Roger,’ ‘Roger the Rigid,’ stories of merchants’ daughters, soldiers’ daughters, noble daughters . . . Sabine, had earned herself a spell of patrol in the gods-forsaken eastern hills when she offered her king physical violence if he didn’t keep his hands to himself.”
Farmer complains that Iceblade only “talk(s) about his skill as a lover and his last woman. Beka overhears Iceblade talking about a woman with, “‘—nice, firm peaches,’ Iceblade was saying, his hands shaping the womanfruit he meant. ‘No pestiferous husband in the way, either.’”
A servant says she is safe from reprimand because “Master Niccols has taken his pleasures in my bed.”
After joining the Hunt, Lady Sabine talks to some silly noblewomen, who think her “travels with the three of you . . . though gods forbid they would say it! –are one long orgy.”
Beka mentions her ex-fiancé. “The best thing about Holborn was our time in bed. I missed the bedding, though not the man, and I deeply envied Sabine and Tunstall that night.
Farmer kisses Beka. “He caught me by surprise when he leaned down and kissed me softly. His lips parted from mine gently, he stroked a lock of my hair away from my face.”
When Farmer sees Beka dressed in a long shirt but no pants, he says, “It’s just that I’ve, I’ve never, well, you look different. Good. Very good.”
An evil mage says, “Sabine’s just a crude brawler, mad for sex and fighting.”
After being captured, Beka and Farmer admit they love each other, and kiss several times after that. “This time he held me carefully while kissing me in a most satisfying way . . . he sat on a bench and pulled me onto his lap. Then, with most of him around me, and me around a good bit of him, I was content to hold him.”
When Beka won’t stop laughing, “Farmer resorted to wanton kissing. That worked. I am much in favor of wanton kissing and other things.”
Farmer hides a ribbon that holds magic in his bum. When captured, he asks Beka, “Did they look in your bum, or in your coyne? . . . you could have a weapon in either place. A strangling cord at the very least.” Beka doesn’t watch as he removes the object from his bum.

Violence

Beka is slapped by a mother that blames her son’s death on Beka’s involvement with him. “I saw her slap coming, but I did naught to stop it. Only when she went for a second blow did I grab her wrist. ‘You cold, Cesspit trull!’ she screamed. ‘My poor lad was forever trying to impress you. He wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t been trying to prove himself as good as you.’ ”

Beka rides to a palace after there has been an attack. “Bodies lay among the flowers. Here were the missing Palace Guards, as well as men of the King’s Own, and the Black God knew how many servants, all burned, sword-hacked, or stabbed.”
The kidnapped prince is disguised as a slave and travels with a slave train. In Tortall, it is legal to own and sell slaves.
Beka finds a Dog that has been murdered. “The Dog lay half in the water, half out, just ten feet from the road. Animals had been at her legs. When we pulled her from the water, we saw fishes had been at the rest of her.”
Beka and her team discover a grave. Farmer digs the bodies up with magic, to discover what killed them. “With the other hand, he beckoned the dead forward. When they were but a foot away, he gently let them settle on the grass . . . The worms and beetles had been at them already. They were black and swollen with rot, their scant ragged clothes cutting into their flesh.”
Beka finds a young slave girl who was strangled. “The gixie Linnet was sprawled naked atop heaped slops from the kitchens. Her face was purple and swollen . . . I used my fingertips to push her up on her side. The blood in her body had flowed down into her back and bum, pooling there, turning that part of her skin purple.”
Beka and her friends are attacked. “I screamed as one hacked at Achoo. She danced out of the way and leaped for his throat, snarling. Pounce went for the eyes of the cove beside that one . . . A Rat came at me on my right. I swung my baton hard into his knees, hearing bone shatter as he pitched face-first toward the fire. He threw himself to the side, away from the flames, but didn’t remember I was still there with my dagger. I killed him and hunkered by his corpse, keeping low.”
Beka kills a mage who is trying to kill Farmer. “I reached the road just as lightning struck the ground in front of Farmer . . . I looked for the solid form inside the wavering illusion and struck as hard as I could . . . The image vanished. The mage lay in the road, a dent in her head from my blow.”
An inn catches on fire. “I could hear no voices, but I saw a burning body fallen on the steps . . . Three people stood by the well . . . their magics combined to draw up water into a great snakelike column that rose all the way to the attic.”
Achoo finds a pile of dead bodies. “Her face was bloated and black from the time she had lain here in the sun. She crawled with maggots. They all did.”
An evil mage insinuates that Beka slept with her foster father. “[Lady Teodorie] never struck me as the sort to let her man keep his child mistress under her roof.” Beka spits on him. The man then “slapped me hard, rocking my head back on my neck.”
Sabine slaps her cousin when she realizes she was involved in a plot to kill the King. “Sabine strode up to her and slapped her across the face. Nomalla let her do it, to my shock.”
Tunstall and Beka get in a fight. “I drew a long, flat knife from my arm guard and shoved the blade clean through the heavy muscle of his left forearm. Gritting my teeth, I wrenched it all the way around . . . he grabbed my braid at the end this time. I lifted myself as high as I could go, raising my arms as I gripped my baton two-handed. With all my strength I slammed my lead-cored baton down on Tunstall’s oft-broken knees.”
When his plot for power fails, “[Thanen] leaped from the tallest height in the castle. The coward left his family and remaining allies to face the royal courts.”
There are many executions after the plot to take over the throne is revealed. “When the day was done and the dead were left swinging or smoking, depending upon the magistrates’ judgment . . . since Prince Baird had not led the conspiracy based on the evidence, he would not be forced to endure being hanged, drawn, and quartered, as the other nobles had. Once it was done, his head was placed over the main palace gat as a warning to others with ambition.”

Drugs and Alcohol

Beka gives the queen a bit of wine to calm her after she suffers a fright.

Beka will consume alcohol on occasion, but she turns it down most of the time. “Tunstall offered me the small bottle of mead he always carries in case someone needs warming up, but I shook my head. I don’t like to drink at all when I’m on duty, even when it might warm me.” Another time, Beka “decided the wine was light enough that a cup wouldn’t addle me too badly, if I had some of the bread and cheese first.”
Farmer checks some water for sickness and poison. Beka is grateful and thinks, “I would have hated to slow us down while I shit my tripes out because someone had dumped offal upstream—or while I died of poison or spells.”
Beka drinks a bit while undercover. She “took a seemingly deep drink from my tankard. It was filled with strong ale. I sipped and let the rest stay where it was. The last thing I needed tonight was a gut full of spirits.”

Language

“Piss” and “scummer” are used often, typically in regards to the smells that Beka’s hound can track, but occasionally they are used as profanity as well. “Just now I felt like an unmade bed, while the sky continued to piss on me.”

Phrases and words such as “cracknob,” “cracked mumper,” “doxy,” “guttersnipe,” and “pox rot it” are used often.
“Ass” and “arse” are used often. Tunstall says, “We’re wasting time here, standing about with our thumbs up our asses.” Beka once says, “Craven canker-licking sarden arseworms,” when she discovers the kidnappers have burned a bridge so she can’t follow.
“Bastard” is said a few times. Achoo is called a bastard dog, and a ghost tells Beka, “Well, he’ll soon learn I won’t do as some randy bastard with a title bids. He’ll rue the day he crossed by friends and me!”
When Beka is strict, a man says, “I bet she sets the Corus Rats to kissing the mules’ arses . . . Stricter than their old mams!”
“Bitch” is said once, when a mage tells Beka, “We were only a day behind you, stupid bitch, riding hard. We passed you by night.”

Supernatural

Some people in Beka’s world have the Magical Gift, as it is called. This varies widely, and can be used from anything from healing and fighting to predicting or controlling the weather. A pair of mages manages to raise two sunken ships from the bottom of the sea after another mage senses them and projects an image of the ships above the water. “Two ships drawn in fire floated over the middle of the cove.”
Beka travels with a mage who calls himself Farmer. He is a powerful mage, who practices magic often. Sometimes his magic isn’t visible; sometimes it is very flashy. Once he sets a trap for another mage. “The blue sheath that covered him sent power flowing out over the little river to its opposite bank. An image formed over the water, bright against the dark and the magic. It was that of a woman in dull olive silk . . . The mixed-color fires rose from the river and flowed into the image of the Viper, swirling around until they swallowed her.”
Beka and some companions travel “under magical sleep, trapped onto their bunks to keep from flying off of them” because the ship is blow by mage-winds and are so fast “they don’t sail over the waves, they bounce off of them.”
Beka has a magicked mirror that “seemed to show me all manner of magics, whatever they were for and no matter what their strength.”
Beka’s cat is a constellation visiting the human world. After a nasty sea voyage, the cat says “I went to the Realms of the Gods once Achoo was under the sleep spell . . . Why should I remain for such an abysmal voyage if I don’t have to?” The constellation is not supposed to meddle in the human world, so he does so at the risk of angering the gods.
Beka can hear unhappy souls that ride on pidgeonbacks until they go to meet the Black God in his realm. As such, Beka is considered to be in the Black God’s service, and she often says prayers for the dead. “I closed the big cove’s open eyes with my fingers and set two copers from my purse on them . . . ‘Black God take you gentle, brave defender,’ I whispered. ‘The living will carry your duty now. Find the Peaceful Realms and rest.’ ”
An evil mage melts people who get in her way. “We both raised our lamps so we could better see the nastiness that was before us. It was a great soup that lay on the grass, trickling slowly into the river. I stared at it, fascinated. I recognized pieces of metal from horses’ tack, metal amulets and jewelry, and swords and daggers, but naught that was leather, cloth, or skin.”
Pounce steps in to stop Achoo from dying, even though he knows the gods will be angry. “Pounce set a forepaw on Achoo’s bleeding wound. Achoo shuddered all over and whined, but held still. Pounce kept his paw there a moment longer, then took it away . . . The wound closed and shrank, until it looked like an old scar.”

Spiritual Content

There are many gods in Tortall, though most rarely interact with mankind. The Mother, the Black God, Mithros, and the Drowned God are a few. Their most-often appearance in Tortall culture is their names being used as profanity, or exclamations of surprise. Tunstall says, “Mithros’s spear, what kind of cracknob picks a mage name like Farmer?”

The gods’ names are also invoked in greetings and blessings. One man tells Beka and her team, “I’ll make sacrifice to Great Mithros in your names, in hopes he’ll keep guiding you.” Another time Beka writes, “Gods all aid me and my Hunting team, I beg,” in her journal.
Beka and her cat can talk silently during hunts and when they are bored. “Pounce and I had entertained each other through prayers at Lord Gershom’s for years, and had begun again when our Hunts took us to noble houses.”
When Beka almost cries because they don’t have time to bury the bodies they discover, the Black God appears and buries them for her. This is the first time she has seen the Black God, the god of death. “You need not try to bury them, my finest priestess. I will do so . . . The god I’d been taught to call black reached out hands gloved in ever-changing colors, holding them over the murdered slaves, the guards, and the Viper. Suddenly green tendrils sprouted from the earth, twining around limbs and bodies like so many agile snakes . . . By the time they had stopped, the ground where the dead had lain was sunken. It looked as if their remains had been placed there decades ago and only flowers remained.”

by Morgan Lynn