Starred review from August 22, 2016
The series opener from Pike (the Wings series) dazzles and enchants, blending Baroque-era sensibilities with futuristic realities. Danica Grayson, 17, lives in the 22nd-century country of Sonoman-Versailles, which consists of the French palace at Versailles. Now owned by a multinational conglomerate, the palace and its grounds act as the company’s headquarters and the last bastion of courtly life. It’s a place of contradictions, where robots handle mundane tasks, overseen by a frighteningly efficient AI, and the residents adopt the dress and social structure of a bygone age. Blackmailed into an engagement with the 19-year-old king, Danica is desperate to escape. The only way she can flee the king’s wrath and her mother’s tyranny is to become someone else, which requires money, so she turns to selling a powerful drug that’s infecting the streets of Paris. Mixed into cosmetics, it becomes wildly popular, but Danica’s downfall is as swift as it is gripping. Beautifully detailed scenes serve as the foundation for Danica’s ethical quandaries and illuminate the fantastical world in which she lives. Ages 14–up. Agent: Mandy Hubbard, Emerald City Literary.