Endless Water, Starless Sky

April 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-Continuing where Bright Smoke, Cold Fire ended, young lovers, loosely based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet continue to search for some way they can happily be united, despite the fact that Romeo is dead and Juliet ("the sword of the Catresou") is bound to forever make war on Romeo's clan, the Mahyanai. Further complicating the plot, all people are threatened by the Ruining, a fog-shrouded event that will render the land lifeless. Hodge continues building the world of Viyara and the Lower City, and the concept of zoura: living rightly, and being protected in the afterlife. Paris and Tybalt put in appearances, along with Runajo, the gender-fluid Vai, a Master Necromancer, revenants, and the living dead. While violent passages are a small proportion of the book, squeamish readers should note that there are beheadings, descriptions of cutting (self and others), and rivers filled with boiling blood. The uplifting ending points toward a third book. VERDICT Fans of the previous volume will enjoy this continuation; new readers will be a bit lost. A strong choice where the first book is popular.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018
Their last misadventures brought them close to death, but the star-crossed lovers roar back to life in this sequel.Grief- and guilt-stricken, the survivors now (again) serve opposing families. Always dramatic, Mahyanai Romeo becomes a vigilante to protect his fugitive (and ungrateful) Catresou in-laws. Meanwhile, Juliet, mistakenly bonded to Mahyanai Runajo, seeks loopholes in her new in-laws'/captors' commands even as they wield her like a weapon against her Catresou kin. Even Paris reappears, albeit as one of the living dead enslaved by the Master Necromancer, whose magical malevolence has hastened the Ruining, eroding the blood-sacrifice-fueled walls around Viyara and rapidly reanimating the dead as ravenous revenants. Gender-bending Vai--likely Twelfth Night's Viola and one of the few main characters of color--continues to defend the Lower City. Reunion and romance are repeatedly postponed, and the apparent finale pauses for a strange detour into the land of Death, where the four protagonists slog through a Dantesque nightscape of tormented souls, allegorical semimedieval monsters, and Greek-myth-level trials. With a multitude of points of view, chaotic fight scenes, and the feverish medieval-world-besieged-by-zombies plot, readers may not even care about Hodge's (Bright Smoke, Cold Fire, 2016, etc.) departure from Shakespeare or the absence of the Bard's levity.Teens seeking melodrama, tense tragedy, and poignantly self-sacrificing protagonists will be amply rewarded. (Fantasy. 14-18)

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