The Good Neighbors: Kin - Book One by: Black & Naifeh

The Good Neighbors:
Kin - Book One
Holly Black (Author)
Ted Naifeh (Illustrator)
Graphix an imprint of
Scholastic
ISBN 9780439855624

From the Publishers of Jeff Smith's Bone comes a new series from one of the authors of the Spiderwick Chronicles. The series called Kin debuts this fall with The Good Neighbors. This is a fantastic graphic novel. The story is strong and compelling, the characters are enticing and draw the readers in, and the artwork is excellent.

This is the beginning of the story of Rue Silver. Rue thought she was a typical student - she had good friends, hung out, went to class and broke into abandoned buildings to climb and explore in them. But now her mother has just disappeared, her father has been arrested, suspected of killing her and one of his grad students. However the story is not as direct as that. Because, unbeknownst to her, Rue is a faerie, like her mother. Rue embarks on a quest - a quest to save her father, a quest to find her mother and after discovering her fey roots, a quest to understand herself and her role in the world. For a battle is brewing between the faerie world and our world, and a dark faerie has plans to make mortals live in fear of the good neighbors once again.

This book reads like a cross between Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and Stardust but with a much darker edge than Stardust. Drawn completely in grayscale, it has an otherworldly feel yet strangely familiar. Black's story draws you in and compels you to read on and Naifeh's images powerfully complement the words. The only drawback is that the book leaves you hanging and desperate to find out what happens next, and yet I cannot find a release date for book two anywhere. So once you are hooked you might have to wait a while for the next installment. But even with that the book is more than worth the effort.

(First published in Imprint 2008-09-19.)

Other Books by Holly Black:

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (2010)

The Modern Faerie Tales
Tithe (2002)
Valiant (2005)
Ironside (2007)

The Spiderwick Chronicles
The Field Guide (2003)
The Seeing Stone (2003)
Lucinda's Secret (2003)
The Ironwood Tree (2004)
The Wrath of Mulgarath (2004)
Arthur Spiderwick's Notebook of Fantastical Observations (2005)
Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You (2005)
Care and Feeding of Sprites (2006)

Beyond Spiderwick
The Nixie's Song (2007)
A Giant Problem (2008)
The Wyrm King (2009)

The Good Neighbors
Kin (2008)
Kith (2009)
Kind (2010)

The Curse Workers
White Cat (2010)
Red Glove (2011)
Black Heart (2012)

Anthologies
Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd (2009)
Zombies vs. Unicorns (2010)
Welcome to Bordertown (2011)