Valiant

August 21, 2006
What makes Black's books so appealing to young adult readers is their well-balanced mix of reality (including a healthy dose of sex), high-concept fantasy and old-fashioned mystery. Raudman's expert reading of Black's second book in what the author calls the Faerie series catches that delicate blend very well, giving equal weight and credibility to characters who are definitely human (like heroine Valerie, her dismal school mates, her tacky family and the sad young derelicts she meets in the subway tunnels of New York) and those who are from another world entirely—like the golden-eyed troll Ravus, who delivers a drug that heals faeries but kills the human runaways who steal it, looking for a way to improve their desperate condition. Raudman, whom listeners might recognize as several of the younger voices on The Simpsons
, has a universally appealing voice likely to please hardcore fantasy fans and neophytes alike. Ages 14-up.

May 30, 2005
When 17-year-old Valerie Russell finds her boyfriend having sex with her mother, she splits Jersey for Manhattan, takes in a Rangers game and falls in with some creepy homeless teens who live on an abandoned subway platform. They survive by rooting through trash, and shoot up to take the edge off their urine-scented, rat-infested existence. It isn't until Val realizes that they're shooting up faerie drugs that this unevenly paced companion to Black's debut novel, Tithe, takes off. Val joins her fellow squatters as a courier for the faerie healer Ravus, a troll who, in a Beauty-and-the-Beast-inspired twist, becomes Val's romantic interest while turning her skills with a lacrosse stick into prowess with a sword. But Val succumbs to addiction, siphoning Ravus's potion for personal thrills. When she finds one of the troll's customers (a mermaid) murdered, she gets caught in the internecine politics of rival faerie courts. Black draws on a grab bag of fairy and folk motifs to create a labyrinthine plot with a decidedly dark edge in a narrative rife with expletives. Val, though sympathetic, is not as memorable as Tithe's Kaye, and that book's fans may miss the trips into the enchanted faerie world. The squatters' actions spiral inexorably toward a death, but the victim turns out to be a cop-in a horrifying incident that is never mentioned again. The climax connects with the plot of Black's first novel, and fans of Tithe will probably stick with the long build-up to get to the exciting finish. Ages 14-up.