This week I got a couple of books; a printed one, and a few eARCs:
Tierras de Esmeralda: La Esfera Mágica, by Pilar Alberdi.
(Printed. From Publisher.)
Summary from Goodreads (translated by me):A land of leyend, where numerous characters face the darkness released by Ténebrus and his minions. While on the Lands of Esmerald, their inhabitants have understood that a book is worth as much as a library, and a person as much as all people, on the dark world beside them, evil lurks in shadows.
Can a group of teenagers and an elder restore hope to the villages? And what about those flying young people from Tilsmans?
To know that, just open this book, where it reads...
"Lands of Esmerald or the lineage of the Smáragdos. Also known as the Land of the Three Kingdoms (Mytos, Circe and Artemisa), the three lineages and the three libraries." Submerge in a classical and medieval world, where the wondrous becomes real. A war between good and evil. This is just the beginning.
The Near Witch, by Victoria Schwab.
(eARC from NetGalley.)
Summary from Goodreads:
The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children.
If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company.
And there are no strangers in the town of Near.These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life.
But when an actual stranger—a boy who seems to fade like smoke—appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true.
The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion. Still, he insists on helping Lexi search for them. Something tells her she can trust him.
As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi’s need to know—about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy.
Part fairy tale, part love story, Victoria Schwab’s debut novel is entirely original yet achingly familiar: a song you heard long ago, a whisper carried by the wind, and a dream you won’t soon forget.
