Elle Tesch's debut, the YA gothic fantasy What Wakes the Bells, intricately builds the sentient city of Vaiwyn and uses stirring prose to depict how one young woman fights to save it.
Vaiwyn, built by five divine beings known as the Saints, "bleeds through veins that serve as cobbled streets, settles its growing bones in the creaks of the beams, and claims the airy hollows of its ancient buildings as lungs." For a thousand years, 17-year-old Wilhelmina Strauss's family has cared for the city's Vesper bells, which both protect Vaiwyn from an evil entity known as "the Bane" and invite the demon in: "Twelve peals to raise the alarm; a thirteenth to revive the evil from wherever it lies banished." Bell keepers thwart the Bane's awakening daily by stilling their assigned bell's clapper before the 13th toll. Mina, who assumed her deceased father's role as the keeper of Arbutus eight months ago, does everything right, but an unknown magic makes Arbutus sing its "horrid song": the Bane is unleashed. Mina must reveal the bitter secrets in the sinews of her city if she hopes to save it.
Tesch unveils the full extent of the Bane's horrors through riveting episodes of the living city's malfunctioning lifeforce (for example, the Bane animates gargoyles and statues to attack Vaiwyn's townspeople). Mina, the citizens under siege, and Vaiwyn itself all have distinct personalities and individual histories, and readers will likely sympathize with Mina's perseverance and appreciate the visibility of her demisexuality. Teen readers hungry for dark academia and complex magical lore are sure to devour What Wakes the Bells. --Cristina Iannarino, children's book buyer, Books on the Square