• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2020 October #2
  At the end of The Missing of Clairdelune (2019), Ophelia's fiancé,Thorn, disappears (into thin air). When Ophelia goes in search of him, her travels take her to Babel, where she is employed under an assumed name as an apprentice Forerunner and where she seeks entry to the Secretarium, the record of all knowledge of all the arks. When she does find Thorn, he's caught up in his own difficulties and the two ultimately must save each other. The first chapter in this third entry attempts to situate readers by recapping the main points of the first two books, Clairdelune and A Winter's Promise (2018), but motivations and the massive cast of characters will be much more meaningful if the reading is done in order. The writing is effective and melodramatic (in a positive way), despite having to overcome a dragging plot in a few spots. It is a complex, imaginative, somewhat steampunk version of the Baudelaire orphans' adventures, as written for teens and adults. Be advised: it is probably not for those with strict interpretations of God. Grades 9-12. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Christelle Dabos was born on the Côte d’Azur in 1980 and grew up in a home filled with classical music and historical games. She now lives in Belgium. A Winter’s Promise, her debut novel, won the Gallimard Jeunesse-RTL-Télérama First Novel Competition in France, and was named a Best Book of the Year by critics and publications in the US, including Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Publishers Weekly, and Chicago Review of Books. A Winter’s Promise was also named the #1 Sci-Fi/Fantasy title of the year by the editors of the Amazon Book Review.