This magnetic and memorable urban fantasy features a young musician from a diaspora, who is destined to bring his people home.
Fifteen years ago, the free Caribbean island of San Madrigal sank, and its residents--a diverse community of Sephardic Jews, Santería practitioners and pirates--migrated to Brooklyn, N.Y. They've been "a lost diaspora from a lost island" ever since. Sixteen-year-old Mateo, whose childhood was spent traveling with his doctor parents, feels even further removed from home. He tries to combat his "double diaspora" by becoming a "kamero" (traditional musician) and learning the intricacies of his people's songs, but he still feels stuck somewhere in between. Until the night of the Grand Fete, that is, when one of the community leaders announces it is time to reveal "the three initiated, fully awakened children of the original spirits of San Madrigal." This trio is prophesied to raise the island and, unbeknownst to him, Mateo is one of them.
In Ballad & Dagger, the first in a duology, Daniel José Older (Dactyl Hill Squad; Shadowshaper series) artfully explores themes of diaspora, colonialism, colorism and identity while immersing readers in a thoroughly established political system, history and culture. Older takes his time explaining San Madrigal's mythology and its people and effortlessly knits Spanish words into the text, cementing readers in Mateo's world. This YA action-adventure is given a layer of ethereal dreaminess by Mateo's attempts to relate to his home and its people through music ("Every song has its beating heart, but our people are a song unto themselves"). A captivating urban fantasy. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader