This first title in Christo's duology lays the groundwork for major battles to come. Here, as four young crooks fight the influx of a deadly dark magic, they must band together to survive. Tavia is the best busker around, selling her magic elixirs and dreaming of escape from Creije as well as from her boss and former friend, Wesley, now a hard-bitten gangster. Meanwhile, warrior Karam continues winning in the fighting rings, but she never forgets her roots or her attraction to resistance fighter Saxony, who still mourns the loss of her little sister. Christo offers the reader creative and thoughtful backstories for each protagonist, along with fully realized worlds rife with magic. Chapters bear the name of the viewpoint character, and the plot advances through their four alternating perspectives. Everywhere are people of color and acknowledgment of LGBTQ characters ce touches not always seen in fantasy. Though the book's latter half could have benefited from some tightening up, there's much here to attract fantasy devotees.

Gr 8 Up--Christo opens this first book in a fantasy duology in the city streets of Creije, where magic is provided as both entertainment and product by young buskers such as Tavia, who works for the city's underboss Wesley, a former magic hustler who has now risen to favored local criminal of their region's kingpin. Tavia, orphaned after her mother's death by magic sickness, is a gifted girl working out a sort of indentured servitude as a purveyor of charms and spells, even some dark magic. When Wesley hands his best busker an illegal potion to sell at the behest of nearly untouchable Dante Ashwood, Tavia's buddy Saxony recklessly doses herself, revealing apparently deadly side effects. This "new magic" appears inconceivable in a world that killed off most of its magic Crafters in an internecine war. Since Crafters alone can make new magic, what's still extant in the realm is a dim copy of its former potent glory. A small crew, including these charactersnominal baddies with hearts of goldleads an assault on Ashwood after the new potion reveals the kingpin's plot to bring massive unrest back to the realm. Lacking deft world-building, many readers may feel insufficiently situated in the complex setting to be compelled through the story. A trio of world-weary and wisecracking main characters seems cut too much from the same cloth in this narrative that feels potentially derivative of the Grishnaverse of Leigh Bardugo, particularly Six of Crows . VERDICT Best enjoyed by undemanding devotees of fantasy who don't mind construction and characterizations that are familiar but not engrossing. -Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Sugar Hill, GA