The Luminaries
Grade : B

Susan Dennard brings young readers a smashing good time with The Luminaries, the first in her new fantasy series about things that go bump in the woods and a heroine determined to change her station in life. The book sports characters worth caring for and excellent worldbuilding, but the story is pretty predictable.

The world of Hemlock Falls looks like a normal town from the outside, but that’s because it’s nearly impossible to get there from the outside. Balancing between the magical and real, the impossible and the possible, it’s a creepy place where scary things are liable to happen, but only at night. And yet people still live by its creepy woods (which may or may not be murderous) and continue to live within its limits, even if they can’t get a cellphone signal there. Selkies, changelings and other creatures exist there, just under the nose of the mortals who also reside there.

Winnie Wednesday comes from an ancestral line of Luminaries, a group of people tasked with protecting Hemlock Falls from those monsters every night and keeping them from escaping into the outside world. The Wednesdays, however, have been denied access to the Luminaries and are shunned by the town at large due to the fact that her father was exposed as a Diana. The Dianas are a witchlike society which are the Luminaries’ mortal enemies – they want to release the monsters into the world beyond the town’s boundaries. Winnie’s father was castigated as a witch, and his family lives in poverty doing menial tasks to make up for his sins.

Winnie sees a way out of their misery. On her sixteenth birthday, she could try out to become a hunter with the Luminaries. Thus would she both be able to support the family and change the town’s opinions about who they are.
To get into this elite group, she needs to train, and she decides to score the best coach possible. That coach would be Jay Thursday, but the problem is that they used to be best friends – and aren’t anymore. Winnie manages to talk Jay into training her - but can she pass the first test that will allow her admittance to this sacred society?

Well, it’s pretty easy to guess. The Luminaries isn’t a surprising story, although it definitely is competently told. But to a degree it feels very been-there-done that – The Hunger Games meets Twilight meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a moderately chirpy tone.

The book is your traditional introductory volume of a long series-to-be. It’s easy to like Winnie and easy to sympathize with her; Jay is likable, too, though he’s a little harder to grasp. They have your classic tortured YA romance that’s fairly predictable, and it’s the least interesting part of the book.

The most interesting part would be the worldbuilding, which is definitely worth delving into. You only get half the story as to how the caste system works in this universe, so you, like Winnie, have to work to slide the parts of the puzzle together.

The Luminaries will probably be devoured happily by teenagers, but I was left hungry for more. Which, I suppose, means it’s quite the successful starter for any series. But the lack of originality really does haunt it, like a werewolf in the dark.

Buy it at: Amazon, Audible or your local independent retailer

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Reviewed by Lisa Fernandes
Grade : B
Book Type: Young Adult

Sensuality: Kisses

Review Date : November 13, 2022

Publication Date: 11/2022

Review Tags: fantasy

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Lisa Fernandes

Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
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