GILDED CAGE

• YA Series: Dark Gifts (Book 1)
• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey (February 14, 2017)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425284158
• ISBN-13: 978-0425284155
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STORY SUMMARY:

For readers of Victoria Aveyard and Kiera Cass comes a darkly fantastical debut set in a modern England where magically gifted aristocrats rule—and commoners are doomed to serve.

NOT ALL ARE FREE.

NOT ALL ARE EQUAL.

NOT ALL WILL BE SAVED.

Our world belongs to the Equals—aristocrats with magical gifts—and all commoners must serve them for ten years.

But behind the gates of England’s grandest estate lies a power that could break the world.

A girl thirsts for love and knowledge.

Abi is a servant to England’s most powerful family, but her spirit is free. So when she falls for one of their noble-born sons, Abi faces a terrible choice. Uncovering the family’s secrets might win her liberty—but will her heart pay the price?

A boy dreams of revolution.

Abi’s brother, Luke, is enslaved in a brutal factory town. Far from his family and cruelly oppressed, he makes friends whose ideals could cost him everything. Now Luke has discovered there may be a power even greater than magic: revolution.

And an aristocrat will remake the world with his dark gifts.

He is a shadow in the glittering world of the Equals, with mysterious powers no one else understands. But will he liberate—or destroy?

REVIEW:

A much-feted Wattpad success story, Vic James' page-turner gives us an alternative British class system based on those who have magical ability (the Skilled) and those who have none, who must spend ten years of their otherwise mundane lives slaving for the ruling class. 

The Hadley family decide to get their ten years over and done with together, but their plans are upset when the oldest son, Luke, is sent to the infamous slave town of Millmoor instead of the grandest house in Britain, belonging to the Jardine family.

With this physical split of the family, the narrative splits into two storylines that come back together when Luke rejoins his family at the Jardine's ancestral home for the last third of the book to find them caught up in the Jardine's political and familial power struggles. 

Luke, Abi, and Daisy Hadley are each in their own way bewitched by a member of the ruling class and as the first book in a projected trilogy ends on a cliffhanger it remains to be seen how those relationships will play out. In the meantime, in this first volume the world-building is intriguing and well-thought out, the details rich and visual, and the intrigue and brisk plotting pull you through the pages, gasping at the collateral damage of tertiary characters in this confident debut.

CIRCUS MIRANDUS

• Age Range: 9 - 12 years
• Grade Level: 4 - 7
• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Dial Books (June 2, 2015)
• ISBN-10: 0525428437 
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STORY SUMMARY:

Do you believe in magic? Micah Tuttle does.

Even though his awful Great-Aunt Gertrudis doesn’t approve, Micah believes in the stories his dying Grandpa Ephraim tells him of the magical Circus Mirandus: the invisible tiger guarding the gates, the beautiful flying birdwoman, and the magician more powerful than any other—the Man Who Bends Light. Finally, Grandpa Ephraim offers proof. The Circus is real. And the Lightbender owes Ephraim a miracle. 

With his friend Jenny Mendoza in tow, Micah sets out to find the Circus and the man he believes will save his grandfather. The only problem is, the Lightbender doesn't want to keep his promise. And now it's up to Micah to get the miracle he came for. 

REVIEW:
Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, Cassie Beasley has created an appealing fantasy with a deeper exploration of love, loss, faith, and being open to the unexplainable.

The relationship between Micah Tuttle and his grandfather also recalls the understanding between Charlie Bucket and his grandfather in Roald Dahl's classic, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

This is a wholly satisfying, elegantly constructed novel that will entertain and instruct with a light hand, particularly on how to let go of a beloved family member.

THE SCORPIO RACES by Maggie Stiefvater

Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Scholastic Press (October 18, 2011)

Some race to win. Others race to survive.

It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line.

Some riders live.

Others die.

At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.

Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn't given her much of a choice. So she enters the competition - the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen.

As she did in her bestselling Shiver trilogy, author Maggie Stiefvater takes us to the breaking point, where both love and life meet their greatest obstacles, and only the strong of heart can survive. The Scorpio Races is an unforgettable reading experience.

Maggie Stiefvater, best known until now for her "Shiver" werewolf romances, has created a story of timeless appeal in The Scorpio Races, adapting Celtic water horse legends to create a stark and isolated island community off a mainland that could be Scotland, Ireland or Wales, but is never named. 

 In this close-knit community one boy is legend. Sean Kendrick is gifted with an intuitive understanding of the capaill uisce, almost untamable horses that surge out of the waves on November 1st each year and are captured and trained to run in a life or death race. Sean's employer's capaill uisce, Corr, is the love of Sean's life until a local girl, Puck Connolly, shocks the traditional community by entering the Scorpio races, hoping to use the prize money to save her home from repossession by the owner of the stables Sean works for. 

 The story unfolds in seamless alternating first-person, providing valuable insight into the emotionally wind-swept inner lives of both Sean and Puck, whose terse island manners would otherwise render them remote. 

Puck endures many challengers to her desire to run the race from the misogynistic islanders, and Sean is more of an extension of the sea and land than a member of the community, but their mutual respect of their horses and their desire to preserve what is best about the island of Thisby turns from tentative acceptance, to friendship, to romance. 

 The annual influx of tourists and Americans who migrate to the island for the races provide an interesting foil to the islanders and allow Stiefvater to explore themes of financial inequality, family unity in times of stress, and loyalty to one's homeland vs seeking opportunity abroad. 

 In this affectionate and evocative depiction of small island life Stiefvater has built a mythology and belief system that feels as though it could have existed for hundreds of years, resulting in a poetically rendered and literary respite from the hackneyed excesses of much current YA literature.

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A stop motion animated trailer by Maggie Stiefvater for the October 2011 novel, THE SCORPIO RACES. Done with several hundred frames, some cool paper, and a very manky paintbrush. Music composed by Maggie Stiefvater, performed by Maggie Stiefvater & Kate Hummel.