Elysium Girls
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A lush, dazzlingly original young adult fantasy about an epic clash of witches, gods, and demons.
Elysium, Oklahoma, is a town like any other. Respectable. God-fearing. Praying for an end to the Dust Bowl. Until the day the people of Elysium are chosen by two sisters: Life and Death. And the Sisters like to gamble against each other with things like time, and space, and human lives. Elysium is to become the gameboard in a ruthless competition between the goddesses. The Dust Soldiers will return in ten years' time, and if the people of Elysium have not proved themselves worthy, all will be slain.
Nearly ten years later, seventeen-year-old Sal Wilkinson is called upon to lead Elysium as it prepares for the end of the game. But then an outsider named Asa arrives at Elysium's gates with nothing more than a sharp smile and a bag of magic tricks, and they trigger a terrible accident that gets both Sal and Asa exiled into the brutal Desert of Dust and Steel. There Sal and Asa stumble upon a gang of girls headed by another exile: a young witch everyone in Elysium believes to be dead. As the apocalypse looms, they must do more than simply tip the scales in Elysium's favor—only by reinventing the rules can they beat Life and Death at their own game in this exciting fantasy debut.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Debut author Pentecost's ambitious Dust Bowl inspired dystopia pulses with dramatic scenes. After a 1935 dust storm decimates the Oklahoma Panhandle, Goddesses Life and Death challenge those remaining to establish order, building a city and tithing crops for 10 years, before their fate is determined. With four months to go, the town of Elysium, under the leadership of witch Mother Morevna, faces racial inequality, rising Dust Sickness, and infiltrating bandits, creating doubts as to the walled city's future. When ailing Mother Morevna names 17-year-old outcast Sal Wilkerson her successor, Sal submerses herself in learning magic until Asa Skander, an otherworldly newcomer chosen by Life as a Wildcard, threatens Sal's position. Following a witches' duel, Sal is cast into the desert surrounding Elysium, where she meets a band of tenacious female scavengers who may be the city's only hope in fighting the coming Dust Soldiers and winning against Death. Pentecost switches viewpoints as chapters count down the months and days until Elysium's judgment; action-packed scenes and dialogue can sound stilted, but an imaginative premise and questions of free will vs. fate prove captivating. Ages 12 up.
