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The Empress's Tomb is Kirsten Miller's second book about Kiki Strike,
the fourteen-year-old Princess of Pokrovia who has been in hiding with her caretaker, Verushka, since an assassination attempt failed when she was very small. Though the series is named after Kiki, it's narrated by Ananka, Kiki's smart, well-read sidekick, whose life may not be as interesting or full of the intrigue and mystery that Kiki's is, but she sure tells a good story.
In this installment, Ananka is in trouble at school and at home (her mother has threatened to send her to boarding school in West Virginia) for her falling grades and sometimes sporadic class attendance (all due to her work with the Irregulars,
saving New York and fighting crime).Kiki's always in danger, but Oona could be in some serious trouble. It turns out Oona
has been keeping secrets from the rest of the Irregulars - secrets that could threaten them all. It's hard to say too much without giving away the plot twists that start pretty much in the first chapter, though. Nothing is too predictable here!
This is a fantastic girl-power adventure story, populated by quirky, interesting (if not always fully-developed) characters engaging in all sorts of bizarre activities
- like the boy who lives in the park with his trained giant squirrels and defaces public property, not to mention the Irregulars themselves (Kiki, Ananka, Oona, Betty, DeeDee, and Iris). It's over 350 pages long, but so action-packed that the length is hardly noticeable
- and at the end, well, that cliffhanger makes you wish it could be longer! It's a smart, funny, fast-paced and suspenseful page-turner sure to captivate even more reluctant readers. It also stands on its own for those who haven't read the first book in the series, but you'll probably want to read it anyway, just because it's so much fun. I look forward to future books in the Kiki
Strike series.
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Kiki Strike: The Empress's Tomb