Queen Among the Dead

Written by Lesley Livingston

Zando Young Readers

978-1-63893-018-1

416 pp.

Ages 14+

January 2023

Hold onto the reins of your horse or your chariot because Lesley Livingston is going to take you on an epic ride through Celtic mythology. There will be conflict and battles, romance and magic, questionable birthrights, and imminent death, and oh so many characters. Like I said, epic.

 

Young Neve lives with her older sister Úna and their father who is the Dagda, leader of the Tuatha Dé, the descendants of the Scathach Queen, and rulers of Eire. Neve wishes she could become a warrior and that her sister could become the next Dagda, but neither is possible for the two crown princesses. Still Neve likes to sneak away from the palace and head into more dangerous areas like Blackwater Town of the oppressed Fir Bolg villagers. As a child, Neve had met a rogue Druid apprentice and thief named Ronan on one of these jaunts and he'd helped her fight a demon using a banned spell stone. Seven years later the two restless spirits become reacquainted when Neve saves Ronan from the óglach who are sent out with their harrow hounds to hunt down illicit magic users and spell traders. But more than this reintroduction is the recognition that there is some magic between them, and not just of the romantic kind.

As Gofannon, the Dagda's chief Druid advisor and monument builder, begins to assert control while the Dagda obsesses over the erection of his formidable mortuary temple, it becomes evident that there is much manipulation of persons and magic in a struggle for power. Who will survive and who will rule is all up to Lesley Livingston.

This is another world, something Lesley Livingston creates with finesse. It's Eire, long ruled by the Tuatha Dé people, led by the Dagda after defeat of the shape-shifting Fomori and their elite female warriors, the Faoladh. It's the oppression of peasants and the Druids usurping the power of magic. It's a high fantasy built upon Celtic mythology with mythical creatures, potent magic and struggles for control. But it's also the story of a boy and a girl from different backgrounds who are drawn together to make the world right for themselves and others. 

The two of them would never truly be able to understand each other. Or each other's worlds. They both carried hidden fire, but they were not the same. Unleashed, Ronan's would be snuffed out by harrow hounds.

     Neve's, he feared, might just burn until the whole realm was on fire. (pg. 125)

This is Zando Young Readers inaugural young adult novel, and I can't think of a more dramatic entry to the YA booksphere than with Lesley Livingston and her Queen Among the Dead. Both have the drama of superb storytelling. As she has done in her earlier series like Wondrous Strange, Starling and The Valiant, Lesley Livingston drops us into worlds that are real and yet not. That's because she bases these stories in legitimate mythologies and immerses readers in the cultures of those legends. The stories were real to those cultures, and they become real to readers of Lesley Livingston's books. Even though she embeds magic and creates the fantastic characters who can make the impossible happen, she will have you convinced to look up the Fir Domnann and the Fé Fíada in Wikipedia. I won't give it away though I will warn you to keep crib notes as Queen Among the Dead is packed with characters, creatures, places, and cultures of wildly unique names. At over four hundred pages, this novel packs a lot of story and it's a story that will draw you and hold you there and take you for a wild ride. And all I can hope is that there is more story to come because I need more of Neve, a young woman who learned she was a warrior in more ways than she'd known.

The Almost Epic Squad: Super Sketchy

Written by Lesley Livingston

Illustrated by Britt Wilson

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-5785-8

181 pp.

Ages 8-13

July 2019

In this newest installment of The Almost Epic Squad, a series of multi-authored middle-grade novels that blend humour, mystery and fantasy, Lesley Livingston introduces Daisy Kildare, one of the four babies exposed to reidium at the Dimly, Manitoba hospital. Like her cohorts Jessica Flem and Gary Lundborg from Kevin Sylvester's Mucus Mayhem (2018) and Ted Staunton's What Blows Up (2019) respectively, Daisy is reaching puberty and unknowingly coming into her almost-epic superpowers. If only she knew how to control hers and stay safe from those who want to take advantage of them. 

Daisy has always tried to figure what she's good at and now that she has to choose a May long-weekend activity camp, she's decided that art will be her destiny. Her efforts are generally not very good until she grabs one of the old promotional pencils from the Dimly Bulb Company. Immediately she feels a tingle and a zap and her below-par art becomes extraordinary and is touted by Mrs. Winklehorn, the art teacher, as "an abstract-Impressionist-absurdist gem." (pg. 22) Kip Winklehorn, a parkour disaster, makes Daisy's acquaintance at camp and tells her that he's always heard that Dimly is well-known for its light bulbs, graphite and Splotnik, a liquor that originated in the Balkan country of Pianvia, and how all were revered by artists. Daisy could certainly use some help as her first drawing assignment at camp is a bust until she feels that familiar tingle and jolt and becomes the pineapple she is drawing.

From The Almost Epic Squad: Super Sketchy by Lesley Livingston, illus. by Britt Wilson

Fortunately, Kip, a kind-hearted boy–he has a three-legged, one-eyed rescue marmot named Percy–comes to her rescue.

...Daisy had somehow managed to turn herself into a tropical fruit. And Kip wasn't about to just leave her there to ripen. (pg. 58)

He discovers that if he erases Daisy's drawing, she will turn back to her human self. It would seem that Daisy's destiny was not art but rather transmogrification.

From The Almost Epic Squad: Super Sketchy by Lesley Livingston, illus. by Britt Wilson

Meanwhile, in a subterranean hideout in the Okanagan valley, Dr. Gavin Bafflegab is working in his Cryptolair to prove the existence of cryptids, creatures of folklore and legend.  He is working for the Boss, the elusive costume-wearing evil queenpin who has been tracking the four Dimly kids, and intends to raise an army of cryptids to secure control over the world. When his research associate a.k.a. lab rat Gerald recognizes Daisy from his time with Dr. Fassbinder, the doctor who'd been testing the Dimly babies from the time of their ir-redium-ation, he and Dr. Bafflegab kidnap Percy to entice Daisy to use her power for them.

In a silly amalgam of characters, plot and action, Lesley Livingston makes Super Sketchy into a caper of kids trying to figure out their skills, including superpowers, amidst the nefarious plans of evil researchers and masterminds and rats and a boisterous assortment of creatures such as Bigfoot, a yeti, Ogopogo, gremlins and goblins.

"...you never want to make a gremlin mad. But you NEVER want to make a goblin mad. Gremlins will just pinch you while you sleep. Goblins will delete your bank account." (pg. 152)

Kids will laugh themselves silly while understanding the need to find something that they're good at. They'll clap for a marmot's rescue, question a rat's motives, and they'll cheer for Bigfoot and his friends. And still Lesley Livingston will leave them wanting to know more about the Boss, a bizarre invitation to a potluck picnic and just what Bernard Cheeper, Department C Projects Coordination, wants from the Almost Epic Squad. With the final volume in The Almost Epic Squad series, Irresistible from Richard Scrimger, due out in October, it won't be long to wait.

 💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭

For readers who will want to read the whole series, here is a list of all titles in The Almost Epic Squad:

Mucus Mayhem by Kevin Sylvester (Sept., 2018) Reviewed here

What Blows Up by Ted Staunton (Jan., 2019) Reviewed here

Super Sketchy by Lesley Livingston (July, 2019)

Irresistible by Richard Scrimger (Oct., 2019)

The Triumphant: Book launch (Toronto, ON)

It's finally here!

The final book in

The Valiant Trilogy

Fallon's story began in

The Valiant

and her fight continued in

 The Defiant

Now

author

Lesley Livingston

completes Fallon's story with

the launch 

of

The Triumphant

Written by Lesley Livingston

Razorbill

9780451480682

416 pp.

Ages 12+

February 2019

on 

Thursday, March 7, 2019

(sorry for the short notice!)

7 -10 p.m. 

at

Dominion Pub and Kitchen

500 Queen St. E.

Toronto, ON

The event is open to all ages! 

(Don't let the pub in the venue name dissuade you from taking in this event.)

⚔⚔⚔⚔⚔⚔⚔⚔⚔

The following blurb about the book comes from Penguin Random House Canada at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/577072/the-triumphant-by-lesley-livingston/9780451480682:

The final book in the Valiant series takes Fallon and her warrior sisters on an epic journey from the corrupt Roman Republic to the wonder of the ancient world: Alexandria, Egypt.

In the wake of their victorious fight to win back the Ludus Achillea, Fallon and her gladiatrix sisters have become the toast of the Republic. However, as a consequence of his actions during the Ludus uprising, Fallon's love Cai has been stripped of his Decurion rank and cast down to serve as one of Caesar's gladiators.

Amid fighting for Cai's freedom, Fallon soon learns that Caesar's enemies are plotting against him and planning to get revenge on his fearsome gladiatrices. When Caesar is murdered by these conspirators, Fallon and the girls lose any sort of protection they once had. Fallon also realizes that the foreign queen Cleopatra is now in grave danger.

Fallon rallies her war band and Cai's friends to get Cleopatra out of the city, and the group heads to the safety of Cleo's homeland, Alexandria, Egypt. Once there, the gladiatrices are promised a place of honor in the queen's elite guard, but is that what any of them really want? 

The Defiant

Written by Lesley Livingston

HarperCollins

978-1-44344-631-0

371 pp.

Ages 13+

January 2018

Gladiatrix Fallon went from king's daughter to human chattel and fighter and finally Victrix in Lesley Livingston's The Valiant (HarperCollins, 2017) but, instead of resting on her laurels and rewards as bestowed by Julius Caesar himself, she's still fighting, now to restore sister's legacy and keep her fellow gladiatrices alive to battle another day.

The Defiant begins with a mock sea battle between Fallon's sister Sorcha's academy, the Ludus Achillea, and that of their rivals, the Ludus Amazona, which belongs to the nasty Pontius Aquila whom Fallon discovered in The Valiant to be part of a dark cult called the Sons of Dis who feast on the hearts of fallen fighters.  But that rivalry explodes when Pontius Aquila arrives claiming that the gladiatrices at the Ludus Achillea have revolted against the Lanistra (Sorcha) who is absent and must be dead. He has bought the ludus from her second in command, Thalestris, who is now also gone. Aquila who had been thwarted when he first wanted to purchase Fallon is determined to have her fight for him. With a little help from her Roman paramour Caius and his fellow legionnaire Quintus, as well as a few unlikely allies, including a kitchen slave, the murderer of her first love and a supposedly-dead Gaulish chieftain, Fallon with many of her oath sister gladiatrices escape and embark on a new struggle: to save Sorcha from the vengeful Thalestris and reclaim the ludus.

I wish I could tell you so much more about the plot of The Defiant, including the legionnaire's instruction of the formidable gladiatrices in coordinated team fighting; the battle with the Amazons, a reclusive group of women on Corsica; Fallon and Cai's romance amidst new trust issues; the reappearance of the vile Nyx, Fallon's rival in Caesar's arena; and a myriad of characters whose trustworthiness is always in question. But a single post is not sufficient to share the richness of Lesley Livingston's newest book.

However, I can tell you that, like every book I have ever read of Lesley Livingston's, there is so much complexity to her plotting, a blend of fantasy infused with well-researched reality, here the history of ancient Roman times, that readers will experience the full effect as a sensory experience. There is brutality and inequality, discrimination and power struggles, and moments of tenderness, sorority and much passion.   

Most importantly, The Defiant has positive messages about the strength of women to battle for themselves and determine their own destinies as they can.  Fallon and Sorcha, and even nasties like Nyx and Thalestris, defy the odds to rise in a paternalistic world, to choose for themselves beyond the rule of men, an intriguing concept for their time. They are sisters in arms and philosophy.

Help me see that we are not the equal of man, we are better. (pg. 248)

But Lesley Livingston goes beyond that decisive message and masterful plotting and characterizations.  She writes with command of language.  Every word embeds the reader in the time and place of The Defiant, often with colourful imagery that reveals and amuses.

The next morning I awoke with a head full of sheep's wool and bootnails. (pg. 37)

Fortunately, The Defiant is not the end of Fallon's story. In February of 2019, The Triumphant, the conclusion to the Valiant series, will be published, and there is news of a series in development at The CW based on the first book in the series.  There may be much in her world that wants to put her down but readers of Lesley Livingston's fantasy would never let her fade away.  She is valiant, she is defiant and she will be triumphant.

⚔⚔⚔⚔⚔⚔⚔⚔⚔

We're delighted that Lesley Livingston will be joining YA authors Natasha Deen and Kari Maaren on a speculative fiction panel at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival on Sunday, September 9, 2018.  We're sure to have a great discussion and you'll get a chance to hear the authors read from their works, to ask a few questions, and to even get a book or two autographed.  Do come and join us!

The Defiant: Book launch (Toronto, ON)

It's almost here!

The sequel to
The Valiant

 Written by Lesley Livingston

HarperCollins

978-1-44344-628-0

372 pp.

Ages 13+

February 2017

Reviewed here

is launching next month!

Book 2 in Lesley Livingston's historical fantasy

 about a female gladiator 

The Defiant

Written by Lesley Livingston

HarperCollins

978-1-44344-631-0

384 pp.

Ages 13+

Out January 23, 2018

launches

on

Thursday, February 8, 2018

at

7:00 pm 

at 

Dominion Pub and Kitchen

500 Queen Street East

Toronto, ON


This event is open to all ages. 

There will be:
live music
light refreshments
and
books on sale courtesy of Bakka-Phoenix Books.

The promotional synopsis on HarperCollins Canada's website tells this of The Defiant's story:

Fallon was warned.

Now she is about to pay the price for winning the love of the Roman people as Caesar’s victorious gladiatrix.

Fallon thought she’d won her freedom, but choosing to stay comes at a cost. She and her warrior sisters are thrust into a vicious conflict with a rival gladiator academy. In the middle of the night, the Ludus Achillea falls under siege and only Fallon and a lucky few are able to flee.

Together, they embark on a mission to take back the home Fallon has fought so hard for, and to free their fellow gladiatrices. But dark conspiracies and vicious power struggles confront Fallon at every turn, threatening not just her honor and her love for Roman soldier Cai, but the very heart of the ancient Roman empire.

On the journey that will define her future, the only people who might possibly help the girl known as Victrix and her sisters are a tribe of long-forgotten mythic Amazon warriors.

The only trouble is, they might just kill her first.

The Valiant

Written by Lesley Livingston

HarperCollins

978-1-44344-628-0

372 pp.

Ages 13+

February 2017

It should have been an auspicious day for Fallon, youngest daughter of the Celtic king Virico, chief of the Cantii tribe of Prydain.  She was turning seventeen and becoming old enough to become a member of her father’s royal war band. Moreover, Maelgwyn Ironhand, her fighting partner and best friend, had pledged his love to her.  But some backroom dealings and a murder send Fallon in pursuit of vengeance and sadly captured by slave traders and on her way to Rome, the city of their enemy and the killers of her much-revered older sister Sorcha.

The slave master Charon takes a surprising interest in Fallon and, after the ship they take across the Mare Nostrum is beset by pirates and Fallon fights alongside the legionnaires sent to escort the cargo, she also becomes the interest of Decurion Caius Varro.  This is especially so after Fallon and Elka, a girl of the Vaini tribe of the north, are sold as a pair to the Ludus Achillea, an academy for female gladiators, lead by the Lady Achillea.  There she is advised to “Kill your past and bury it deep in the earth of your heart” (pg. 135).  But the past keeps rearing its ugly head, bringing those she thought long gone into her present, and demanding her attention if she is to surmount them and become valiant in the future.

From a heart-pounding chariot manoeuvre to the murder of her beloved Mael to the arenas of the Rome and the appalling trafficking of humans as  chattel, The Valiant plunges readers into other worlds in time and space and mood.  The Valiant, like life for Fallon and her compatriots, is not for the faint of heart.  There is a brutality and ruthlessness necessary for their survival that must be balanced against the hedonism of those in power.  But Lesley Livingston focuses on the women as strong  and shrewd, with most finding a way to accept their fates and make them work for them.  There’s Elka who acknowledges to Fallon that with war and with life

“There is only forward. Only tomorrow. No yesterday, no going back.  And nothing of value is left behind, so nothing is truly lost.” (pg. 73)

And there’s Kassandra, a fellow slave girl, who gives Fallon her sandals when an accident permits potential escape.

“This was a girl who would choose to stay chained if it meant that her odds of survival were even so much as a hairsbreadth better.  And there was strength in that choice–the sheer, bloody-minded will to survive no matter how dreadful the circumstance.  Maybe honor wasn’t always something won by a blade, I thought.  And maybe it couldn’t be so easily stripped away, even in servitude.” (pg. 67)

Like all Lesley Livingston’s YA fantasy including her Wondrous Strange and Once Every Never series, The Valiant is an epic read of another world–here historically-based–offering a story of a gladiatrix that might or might not have been possible.  In fact, Lesley Livingston’s afterword discusses the known history of gladiatrices (plural of gladiatrix) and her own creation of “the realm of “what-if” where fantasy meets history.” (pg. 375)  With The Valiant, Lesley Livingston, in her impressively-evocative writing, gives readers a front seat in the arena, glory and guts and even a love story included in the price of admission.

The Valiant: Book launch (Toronto, ON)

Join fantasy young adult author

Lesley Livingston

author of

Wondrous Strange series

and

Starling series

for the launch of her newest young adult novel

The Valiant

by Lesley Livingston

HarperCollins Canada

9781443446280

384 pp.

Ages 12-16

February 2017

on

Thursday, February 23, 2017

7-11 p.m.

Dominion Pub

500 Queen St. E.

Toronto, ON

There will be:

• live entertainment

• a reading from The Valiant

• books available for sale and 

• author book signing.

The book is described as following:
The youngest daughter of a proud Celtic king, Fallon has always lived in the shadow of her older sister Sorcha’s legendary reputation as a warrior. But when Fallon was a young child, the armies of Julius Caesar invaded the island of Britain and her beloved older sister was killed in battle.

On the eve of her seventeenth birthday, Fallon is excited to follow in her sister’s footsteps and earn her rightful place in her father’s royal war band. But she never gets the chance. Instead, Fallon is captured by a band of ruthless brigands who sell her to an exclusive training school for female gladiators—and its most influential patron is none other than Julius Caesar himself. In a cruel twist of fate, Fallon’s worst enemy, the man who destroyed her family, might be her only hope of survival.

Now, Fallon must overcome vicious rivalries, chilling threats and the dangerous attention of Caesar himself to survive the deadly fights that take place both in and out of the arena—and claim her place in history among the Valiant.

Retrieved from 

The Valiant Launch Party Facebook page 

at https://www.facebook.com/events/1871513563083242/ 

on January 14, 2017.

The Haunting of Heck House: The Wiggins Weird, Book 2

Written by Lesley Livingston and Jonathan Llyr

Illustrations by Steven Burley

Puffin Canada

978-0143184263

280 pp.

Ages 8-12

For release October, 2014

It's less than a week before Halloween and authors Lesley Livingston and Jonathan Llyr launched The Haunting of Heck House (sequel to How to Curse in Hieroglyphics, 2013) yesterday, and I can't think of a better reason to finally post my review of this captivating middle-grade read that smacks of funny and scary in equal parts.

Unbeknownst to their grandfather and guardian, Pops Pendleton, twelve-year-old babysitting aficionados and cousins Tweed Pendleton and Cheryl Shumacher sneak out to compete in an overnight babysitting competition at the previously-unknown home of Sir Hector Hecklestone the Third on Eerie Lane.  Along with their varied babysitting tools of the trade, the two take along a malfunctioning drive-in speaker that holds the talkative essence of the Great Simon Omar, dead magician. (You'll need to read Book 1 in The Wiggins Weird, How to Curse in Hieroglyphics, to understand the means by which a portal into the Egyptian afterlife probably created Speakie i.e., a disembodied Omar with audio).  

While these plucky girls intend to go to the Hecklestone house and prove that they're the best babysitters/housesitters for the job, there seem to be super-natural forces working against them, not the least of which are a grand piano plummeting down the stairs, flying books assaulting them, dripping ectoplasm, doors that open and lock without explanation, and their competition, tech wizard Feedback, and 13-year-olds Hazel Polizzi and Cindy Tyson.  Luckily, the cousins get the help of their friends Pilot and Artie to help problem-solve their way out of a haunted house while playing their make-believe game ACTION! in the roles of the League of Awesome so they can get through some scary situations. 

The house with its "early-Munsters vibe" (pg. 104) seems to have its own agenda and all the kids must share their skills–including lock-picking, tech, gargoyle-translation, role-play and mechanics–to help escape its evil hold, and save the ghosts trapped within.  Never fear, though, because The Haunting of Heck House is more humour than horror, wordplay than wickedness, and fun than frightening.  Of course, an 800-lb. piano tumbling down the stairs at the girls is rather disconcerting but, still believing that their skills are being tested, they all take it with comic sensibility.

"What the heck kinda test was that anyway?" Cheryl glowered. "Agility? Musical appreciation?"
"I really didn't appreciate that," Tweed said grimly. (pg. 106)

Even Simon in his audio-speaker form pipes in that, "Guess there will be no encore tonight". (pg. 106)  And then there's an adorable little gargoyle whose "bat-like wings...red eyes, a sharp-hooked beak and talons"(pg. 130) might have been frightening except Ramshackle purrs and likes being stroked like a pussycat!

It's not surprising that, with Lesley Livingston and Jonathan Llyr both involved in acting, that The Haunting of Heck House is a story ripe with a quick-paced plot, highly-visual settings and characters, and priceless dialogue.  And, while Steven Burley's illustrations of the kids' ACTION! role-plays provide entertaining graphics, The Haunting of Heck House is so well written that it easily provides readers with a virtual visual that runs like a movie that could played at the twins' beloved Starlight Paradise Drive-In, with or without 3D-glasses.  Enjoy the movie!