The Essence

Gr 9 Up—Charlaina Hart, 17, is now the unlikely queen of Ludania, but the former evil queen Sabara is not gone. Her spirit, or essence, resides within Charlie. The new queen, while inexperienced and uncomfortable in her role, has been able to make some sweeping changes across the country, including eliminating the class system and uniting the land with one language. She still has much to learn and sets off to a conference where she will meet the queens of the surrounding nations. There, Sabara makes her sinister presence more and more clear. Her desires for immortal Niko cloud Charlie's feelings for Sabara's grandson, Max, creating a strange and extraneous kind of love triangle. Max, her love interest in The Pledge (S & S, 2011), gets little page space, except as a foil for Charlie/Sabara's feelings for Niko. While the majority of the story is told from Charlie's perspective, intermittent point-of-view changes make the narrative choppy. This, combined with an undeterminable setting and too many supernatural/fantasy elements thrown together, results in a book with no real sense of direction. Purchase where the first book has a following.—Mandy Laferriere, Fowler Middle School, Frisco, TX