You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
Started really well, fast paced and intense. At 25%, the end of part one, things really slowed down. Since then it's been at lot of aimless running and hiding with no plan or new plot to drive the story. Day to day survival may be a realistic goal but it's not a very interesting one.
Release Date: October, 7th
Arc provided by Talos Press through Edelweiss
Radiant ups the game in the dystopian and post-apocalyptic story telling, joining the top authors with the most imaginative and well written stories on the subject.
Fans of Susan Ee's "Penryn and the End of Days" series will probably love this!
Radiant is such an amazing and complex story that I am afraid I won't be able to do it justice with my poor and basic review. In fact I'm fighting the urge to only say something as inane as: Wow...and wow...and go read it...and can I say wow again?
With traces of dystopia, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic (and I don't even know how to categorize the living, sentient A.I(?) parts), horror (get ready for some zombie like creatures...) this is basically a story about survival and friendship. Of holding on to something, to someone who is finally there for you, and who won't leave you no matter what.
Not even dead.
With a background of abandonment and neglect, fifteen year old Xhea lives as best as she can on Lower City.
In a world in which magic is the most powerful bargain in the world, Xhea barely scraps a life for herself, not having any magic of her own.
The Lower City part of her world, is where people with little magic _or as in her case, no magic at all_ survive amongst rubble and decay.
By contrast, in the sky, in the City, there are the Towers, floating islands of wealth and privilege, in which people with the greatest magical abilities live.
These towers are fuelled by their inhabitants' magic... and especially by some very important people called Radiants.
Radiants are like magic generators. They have so much magic inside them that it can literally kill them.
Now, magic in Xhea's world is as natural as breathing:
Magic gives you the magical signature you need in order to live a normal life. It allows you to buy everything you need by magically engraving coins with the value of their worth.
For Xhea, not having it, means accepting payments of small value that only children can use, or having to be as dependent on someone's good will to imbue her coins with someone else's magical signature...
Like I said, this is a complex world, and it takes a little while to get used to it. Maybe because it is so different of what we're used to! (at least in my case!) And that's a good thing!
This story is so different, so amazingly outstanding, and so prone to make our small grey cells work, that after awhile I'm telling you: You'll be like a fish on a hook. A very shinning and appetizing hook!
You won't be able to resist it!
So, please, please, just persevere and keep reading it, it will blow your mind!!
Of course, I wouldn't say "nay" to a glossary at the beginning of the book. :)
So, Xhea, an outcast in her own world, someone used to live as a city rat, has however a strong ability:
She can see ghosts.
So when one day a man approaches her, carrying with him a girl's ghost, Xhea's life will never be the same.
Shai is unlike any ghost Xhea has ever seen and, after awhile, these two very different girls start becoming friends.
But Shai has a very important role to play in her society despite being dead, and there are people who won't stop at anything until they get her back.
With cunning political intrigue, and moral dilemmas thrown into this plot, Xhea and Shai will have to rely on one another, and trust in their friendship to survive their ordeal.
As you can read, there's no romance in this story. *YAY!*
That means that if you're like I used to be, until about five years ago, a person that needed a romance thrown into the story to feel that things weren't too boring, then this book isn't for you... now.
In a couple of years _take my word_ you'll love it.
If... however, you like strong and intelligent characters, are sick and tired of cheesy romances, and are over and done with love triangles/quadrangles/... whatever, then this book is most definitely for you!
The plot is unlike any other I've ever read, and it kept me anxiously turning the pages to figure out what was going to happen next! The action and the visual setting that it gives us is so unique, that it is bound to make your head spin!
But if you're afraid that this is only about non stop action, forget about it!
This book deals with some strong abandonment issues. This means that the emotional part is as strong as the action one.
Xhea as been through so much in her life that you just want to give the girl a hug.
If she would let you.
You know... up until a couple months ago, reading arcs had the interesting development of steering me away from books that I would not, NOT, ever buy in my lifetime, because they were that bad!
Now, it has just the opposite effect! Because this is most definitely a book that I'll want to have in my bookshelf!
Go Read It!!
p.s- And luckily it appears that the second volume, Defiant, is going to be released in May 2015!! :)
Now I just have to get my hands on the author's short stories, and try to figure out which of them garnered a Nebula nomination!
This one caught me and I couldn't put it down. Everyone she met I wanted her to meet again so I could find out more of their story. I really hope she has some kind of a love interest in the coming books and it seems like she'll have lots of choices. The ghost we're just cool. Well, I should say Web and Shai are cool.
I just liked Xhea a lot and can't wait to get the next one.
I just liked Xhea a lot and can't wait to get the next one.
Love the concept, but found the pacing patchy. This and "Defragmenting Daniel" are set in a similar dystopia.
Rich worldbuilding and engaging plot, real and raw and powerful and likable characters.
Rounding this up from 3.5 stars. Some really interesting ideas but also a whole lot of convenient & coincidental new powers/acquaintances.
I just finished the book Radiant last night in the middle of a thunderstorm. It was fitting to read about magic battles by the flash of lighting. It was better to discover a new young-adult fantasy author with potential.
Radiant starts with Xhea, a lone girl whose main source of income is expelling ghosts. In a world where everybody is born with magic and the rich live in floating towers, Xhea has no magic and lives on the ground. Yet she can see ghosts, and discern the flow of magic.
Xhea takes a job, thinking only to make a little money and to get high on somebody else's magic. Instead she becomes embroiled in a major struggle over the fate of a girl who is already dead.
While this book is clearly not as polished as it could be, it showcases the talents of a growing author with good pacing, compelling characters, and beautiful settings. The lower world is gritty while the travel in the Towers is beautiful. Though the author never explains a few key elements, this story is still a gem.
This is the first in a trilogy, though it stands on its own. I look forward to the next installments and you should look forward to this one. It comes out September 2 from Talos Press.
Radiant starts with Xhea, a lone girl whose main source of income is expelling ghosts. In a world where everybody is born with magic and the rich live in floating towers, Xhea has no magic and lives on the ground. Yet she can see ghosts, and discern the flow of magic.
Xhea takes a job, thinking only to make a little money and to get high on somebody else's magic. Instead she becomes embroiled in a major struggle over the fate of a girl who is already dead.
While this book is clearly not as polished as it could be, it showcases the talents of a growing author with good pacing, compelling characters, and beautiful settings. The lower world is gritty while the travel in the Towers is beautiful. Though the author never explains a few key elements, this story is still a gem.
This is the first in a trilogy, though it stands on its own. I look forward to the next installments and you should look forward to this one. It comes out September 2 from Talos Press.
Fairly novel background and character, good for a first novel. I will read the other ones.
I am always on the lookout for new and interesting takes on urban fantasy. I enjoy urban fantasy set in our world, where the supernatural are either covert or living openly, but there is something so good about made-up cities and their cultures. Radiant, Karina Sumner-Smith’s first book in a trilogy about the Towers, is a prime example of this. She creates a world where magic is as commonplace as technology is for us—but the protagonist, Xhea, can’t access it. This premise alone isn’t all that original, but when you toss in Xhea’s ability to see and interact with ghosts, you get closer to an amazing story.
Radiant opens with Xhea temporarily severing the tether that attaches a ghost to a person she’s haunting. But this is no ordinary ghost. Shai is the eponymous Radiant, and without going into spoilers, let’s just say that makes her very valuable to the upper class citizens of the floating Towers. Down in the muck of the Lower City, Xhea couldn’t care less, and she resolves to help keep Shai away from them and free Shai, if possible. There is much more at stake, of course. So Xhea finds herself a fugitive from multiple Towers, ghostly Shai in tow, as her own strange magic, so different from everyone else’s, finally starts to assert itself.
I loved Xhea’s characterization from the start, though I didn’t necessarily love Xhea herself, if that makes sense. Sumner-Smith portrays Xhea as a very exhausted teenager: she has literally been fighting for her survival every day of her life, ever since she ran away from the skyscraper that would have indentured her, discovered her darkness, and used it to their advantage. Her attitude is very consistent with this. A lot of her behaviour is reactive rather than proactive—she doesn’t really care about the larger political implications of what she’s doing, or what will happen in the short- or long-terms if she is successful. She’s just acting, because to stand still is to die.
Similarly, Sumner-Smith lays out the workings of this world with clarity and a minimum of exposition. The Lower City comes alive as Xhea and Shai duck, dodge, and dive through it. It’s a bustling marketplace of people just trying to get by, while far above them, these glimmering edifices hang in the sky like judgmental, inaccessible palaces. Citizens occasionally deign to descend from the Towers, in magical elevators, to purchase items from the Lower City’s markets, or make their own sales. But by and large, the Towers have their own politics, their own culture, their own problems—all of which I hope to learn more about in future books. Sumner-Smith presents a great example of a divided, polarized society that is almost allegorical for what’s happening in our own time without making the allegory too on-the-nose like some young-adult dystopian novels.
Radiant loses some of its lustre simply because I think we spend too much time with Xhea and a few other characters. Although she interacts with a small number of allies, and confronts a small number of antagonists, we never really get to know many other characters. Shai is about the only other one who receives any development. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a book, but I tend to prefer books with ensemble casts or, if we have a single, strong central protagonist, then a wider set of characters with whom they interact. Despite the awesome scope hinted at in this book, Xhea’s world is such a narrow slice of it that the novel feels constrained as a result.
The plot itself is also fairly simple. I enjoyed reading this book, and the last fifty pages really pick up and turn into a satisfying, action-packed climax. Yet for the middle third of the book, I vacillated between mild interest and mild boredom, much as Xhea’s status vacillates between mild safety and mild danger. If there had been even just a little bit more, just one more layer to the mystery, something else for Xhea to investigate or do, then perhaps that would have been enough to keep me interested.
I don’t mean to damn with faint praise: Radiant is breathtaking for its originality and its writing. It’s a strong book—and that’s precisely why I’m trying to articulate why I didn’t love it. These are the books that are interesting, the ones you know are good yet don’t quite become favourites.
Radiant opens with Xhea temporarily severing the tether that attaches a ghost to a person she’s haunting. But this is no ordinary ghost. Shai is the eponymous Radiant, and without going into spoilers, let’s just say that makes her very valuable to the upper class citizens of the floating Towers. Down in the muck of the Lower City, Xhea couldn’t care less, and she resolves to help keep Shai away from them and free Shai, if possible. There is much more at stake, of course. So Xhea finds herself a fugitive from multiple Towers, ghostly Shai in tow, as her own strange magic, so different from everyone else’s, finally starts to assert itself.
I loved Xhea’s characterization from the start, though I didn’t necessarily love Xhea herself, if that makes sense. Sumner-Smith portrays Xhea as a very exhausted teenager: she has literally been fighting for her survival every day of her life, ever since she ran away from the skyscraper that would have indentured her, discovered her darkness, and used it to their advantage. Her attitude is very consistent with this. A lot of her behaviour is reactive rather than proactive—she doesn’t really care about the larger political implications of what she’s doing, or what will happen in the short- or long-terms if she is successful. She’s just acting, because to stand still is to die.
Similarly, Sumner-Smith lays out the workings of this world with clarity and a minimum of exposition. The Lower City comes alive as Xhea and Shai duck, dodge, and dive through it. It’s a bustling marketplace of people just trying to get by, while far above them, these glimmering edifices hang in the sky like judgmental, inaccessible palaces. Citizens occasionally deign to descend from the Towers, in magical elevators, to purchase items from the Lower City’s markets, or make their own sales. But by and large, the Towers have their own politics, their own culture, their own problems—all of which I hope to learn more about in future books. Sumner-Smith presents a great example of a divided, polarized society that is almost allegorical for what’s happening in our own time without making the allegory too on-the-nose like some young-adult dystopian novels.
Radiant loses some of its lustre simply because I think we spend too much time with Xhea and a few other characters. Although she interacts with a small number of allies, and confronts a small number of antagonists, we never really get to know many other characters. Shai is about the only other one who receives any development. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a book, but I tend to prefer books with ensemble casts or, if we have a single, strong central protagonist, then a wider set of characters with whom they interact. Despite the awesome scope hinted at in this book, Xhea’s world is such a narrow slice of it that the novel feels constrained as a result.
The plot itself is also fairly simple. I enjoyed reading this book, and the last fifty pages really pick up and turn into a satisfying, action-packed climax. Yet for the middle third of the book, I vacillated between mild interest and mild boredom, much as Xhea’s status vacillates between mild safety and mild danger. If there had been even just a little bit more, just one more layer to the mystery, something else for Xhea to investigate or do, then perhaps that would have been enough to keep me interested.
I don’t mean to damn with faint praise: Radiant is breathtaking for its originality and its writing. It’s a strong book—and that’s precisely why I’m trying to articulate why I didn’t love it. These are the books that are interesting, the ones you know are good yet don’t quite become favourites.