Sohrab teaches Darius what friendship is really about: loyalty, honesty, and someone who has your back in a football (soccer) match. But all that changes when Darius meets Sohrab, a Bahá’í boy, in Yazd. When he arrives in Iran, learning to play the Persian card game Rook, socializing, and celebrating Nowruz with a family he had never properly met before is all overwhelming and leaves Darius wondering if he’ll ever truly belong anywhere. He’s mocked for his name and nerdy interests at Chapel Hill High School in Portland, Oregon, and doesn’t speak enough Farsi to communicate with his Iranian relatives either. Iranian on his mother’s side and white American on his father’s side, Darius never quite fits in. When Darius’ grandfather becomes terminally ill, Darius, along with his parents and younger sister, travels to Iran for the first time in his life.

Trans erasure casts a shadow on this otherwise fiery fantasy aflame with descriptive prose and simmering with suspense.ĭarius Kellner suffers from depression, bullying by high school jocks, and a father who seems to always be disappointed in him. The resolution and the epilogue set the stage for the series to continue.

No one sees through Veronyka’s disguise-cut hair and (unsafely) bound chest-but Veronyka fixates on how her presentation makes her a liar. While representations of same-gender romances appear in the story, Pau Preto repeatedly uses binary language and makes no distinction between gender and sex. Most characters described in the text have brown skin. Written in the third person, the chapters alternate between three perspectives, building tension with cliffhangers.

However, when Val betrays her sister, Veronyka discovers the strength to find her own path, disguising herself as a boy to join a secret operation of Phoenix Riders. Veronyka, an orphaned animage with brown skin and black hair, and her controlling older sister, Val, who has brown skin and red hair, dream of hatching phoenix eggs together and flying like the warriors of the past. Her rebellion turned the Council of Governors against Phoenix Riders and animages, people with the power to understand and communicate with animals. Sixteen years ago, the Feather-Crowned Queen died in a glorious blaze fighting her sister for her claim to the throne. From the ashes of rebellion, a force of Phoenix Riders rises to protect their people in Preto’s debut novel.

Crown of feathers by nicki pau preto