Some great news for Witchlanders!

I recently got two fabulous pieces of news from my editor at Atheneum, Caitlyn Dlouhy.  The first is that Witchlanders has been chosen from over 160 books to be one of 20 ABC New Voices selections, a list from the American Booksellers Association that recognizes excellence in a debut MG or YA novel.

AND I was reviewed in the Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books  who said, “Fans of contemplative, psychologically rich (but no less action-packed) fantasies à la Ursula Le Guin will welcome this warm, inventive debut and wait eagerly for the implied sequel.” Get OUT! Ursula Le Guin!?!  Only one of my all-time favorite authors.  I am totally beaming about that one.

I hope it’s okay for me to post the whole review, because here it is:

From the Bulletin for the Centre of Children’s Books, September issue

Ryder has grown up the skeptical son of a witch mother, who was part of the coven that protected their Witchlander village before she lost her faith during a war between the Witchlanders and the neighboring Baen.

When she shares her visions of a Baen assassin, and the village is shortly thereafter attacked, Ryder heads to the mountainous border to fight the threat himself. There he discovers Falpian, a young Baen dispatched to the border by his father for a mission he does not yet know but assumes is central to the impending Baen invasion. Struggling to survive threats both natural and magical in the perilous winter environment, Ryder and Falpian achieve a wary peace as it becomes apparent that they are “twins in spirit,” their psyches and innate magical abilities inextricably linked. They could be incredibly powerful—if they weren’t on opposite sides of a seemingly inevitable second war. Coakley’s world-building is lush and provocative, exploring the ways in which ethnic and cultural conflict can calcify over a generation through a splendidly realized friendship between antagonists, fraught with mistrust and torn loyalties but cemented by a gut-level recognition of shared humanity (as Ryder asks, “Are we only allowed to care about people who are on our side?”). The book also achieves a sophisticated intertwining of religious and magical mythologies that illuminate both the fantasy world and the ways in which its history and belief systems have been manipulated over time. At its heart, though, Witchlanders is all about character, and the struggle of two equally sympathetic, equally flawed protagonists to reconcile inherited enmity with grudging mutual affection—all while battling giant earth-monsters—is what gives this book its urgency and depth. Fans of contemplative, psychologically rich (but no less action-packed) fantasies à la Ursula Le Guin will welcome this warm, inventive debut and wait eagerly for the implied sequel. CG