Mortal Fire

May 6, 2013
Like a Sunday afternoon stroll, Knox’s story sets a meandering pace with an uncertain destination—a page-turner this is not. Given time and an eye for detail, however, Canny Mochrie’s summer odyssey unfolds from a dry depiction of school life in 1959 to a lushly strange dream in a Shangri-La valley. The novel is set in Southland, the lightly fictionalized New Zealand Knox created for Dreamhunter and Dreamquake. Canny is a 16-year-old Ma’eu, taciturn, antisocial, and exceptionally gifted in math. References to Canny’s “Extra,” almost incidental at first, gradually expand as she unwillingly accompanies her college-age stepbrother and his girlfriend on a research trip to a remote town. The Extra is an ethereal script that Canny alone can see, attached to plants, buildings, or nothing at all. When the three come upon a valley dense with the Extra, Canny realizes that there is more to her visions than her own oddness—there are people, the Zarenes, whose existence is interwoven with this magical language. But what is Canny’s connection to them? Dreamlike yet clear-eyed, Canny’s encounter rewards those who give themselves over to Knox’s storytelling. Ages 12–up.

May 1, 2013
A detached, secretive teen discovers the mystery of her origin when she encounters a peculiar, unorthodox family with magical powers. Growing up in 1959 in Southland, a South Pacific island "in a world very like our own," Canny graduates from tech school, where she's a math whiz, "impervious to the point of rudeness," with the ability to see Extra, which are cryptic letters attached to objects. Raised by a domineering mother, Canny knows nothing about her father and wonders what she's "made of." Her only friend, Marli, has polio. Traveling to research a 1929 mining disaster with her stepbrother, Canny enters the Zarene Valley, where she notices the air thick with Extra. She realizes the paranoid Zarenes protect themselves and their valley with Ideogrammatic spells that she can decipher. Determined to steal their magic to help Marli, Canny finds a house where time stands still for 17-year-old Ghislain, a Zarene who's been imprisoned there by a spell since 1929. Drawn to Ghislain and driven by her need to know, Canny risks all to unlock the valley's hidden secrets. A deeply intriguing heroine, Canny provides the focus for this powerful, perplexing story rife with enigmatic characters in a spellbound setting. This intense, complex, occasionally inscrutable fantasy requires patient readers. (Fantasy. 12 & up)

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August 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-A complex, riveting novel set in 1959 on an island republic in the South Pacific, "in a world very like our own-but not completely." Canny, 16, is a mathematician who can see "Extra"-like bits of an unknown language floating in letters in the air. Her brilliance earns her accolades as she competes as a member of the math team. School has ended for the year, and Canny is being forced to accompany her stepbrother, Sholto, and his girlfriend on a camping trip to the Peninsula. Canny's stepfather, who is a history professor, is researching a mining disaster that took place there 30 years before, and Sholto will be interviewing people in the area. Canny doesn't want to go along for lots of reasons, but mainly because she doesn't want to be away from her best friend, Marli, who is a polio victim and is kept in an iron lung. Canny's strong-willed mother insists, and the girl is forced to comply. While on the trip, the young people enter a valley that changes Canny's life forever. The air is rife with Extra, she recognizes that magic is being used by the people there, and she also discovers that she is able to perform it herself. She finds a way to the hidden house at the top of the hill, where Ghislain, an attractive 17-year-old, is trapped by a spell put in place decades earlier. Canny decides to try to steal some of the magic to heal Marli. Torn between her attraction for Ghislain and her loyalty to her friend, she is faced with almost overwhelming realizations as her true parentage is revealed. An absorbing, but challenging read.-Kathy Kirchoefer, Henderson County Public Library, NC

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2013
Grades 7-11 Sixteen-year-old Canny Mochrie has always been different: too cold, too brown, and too strange. She can see something extraunreality along the edges of thingsso she knows immediately that the Zarene Valley is not what it appears to be. A strangely familiar magic has permeated everything, and as Canny is drawn to Ghislain, a handsome 17-year-old boy, she discovers a secret that has defined the Zarenes and the valley for years may be tied to her own murky family history. Knox takes readers on a journey to a world just slightly askew from our own. Intricately plotted, highly literate prose, along with alternating points of view, illuminates the fantastical heart of the story. This is a superficially straightforward tale of girl meets boy (and falls in love and loses him and then fights to save him) made complex through magic and dreams and their repercussions on reality. This is one of those books that, when finished, prompts the reader to go back and reread it in hopes of catching all the clues along the way.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)