The Rising. (Darkness Rising, Book Three). Kelly Armstrong. Toronto, ON: Doubleday Canada, 2013. 407 pp., hardcover, $19.99. ISBN 978-0-385-66857-6. Grades 8-12 / Ages 13-17. Review by Vasso Tassiopoulos. **** /4

excerpt:

The scientists had wanted us to grow up healthy and confident. Most of all, though, they wanted us to be happy, so that when we discovered the truth, we'd be okay with it.

Would we have been okay with it? No. We'd never have forgiven them for the lie. But could we have reconciled ourselves to a life as research subjects and future Cabal employees? I should say no. Emphatically no. Yet I can see a future where that might have happened. If they’d raised us knowing what had been done to us and why. And if they'd given us a choice. Accept what we’re offering or you’re free to leave.

I grieved for the loss of my old life, and I worried about my parents and my friends, and I couldn't even walk it off because the patch of forest was so narrow. So I had to circle, which started to feel like pacing, and only made me all the more anxious. When my palms began to itch, I rubbed them against my jeans, still pacing, until the faint rubbing sound turned into a harsh rasp. I looked down to see the skin on my palms thickening, roughening. Hair had sprouted on the back of my hands. My cheeks itched, too, and when I reached up, I knew what I'd feel—the planes of my face changing, more hair sprouting. I barely had time to think "I'm shifting" when my knees gave way, like someone had kicked them from behind. I fell to all fours, heaving, the air suddenly too thin, my chest too tight.

The Rising is the final supernatural suspense filled novel in Kelley Armstrong's "Darkness Rising" trilogy. The novel continues to follow Maya Delaney, a shape shifting 16-year-old, and her friends as they attempt to escape being captured by the organizations responsible for the super powers that they come to discover they each possess. Maya and her friends are a group of resurrected supernatural beings, called Project Phoenix, who were raised to believe they were part of a small communal town funded by medical research. The Rising is an engaging narrative that moves at a quicker pace than its two predecessors, The Gathering and The Calling, as new discoveries are uncovered by Maya in each short chapter. The novel picks up where The Calling concluded, with Maya and her remaining friends, who have not been captured, continuing to outrun the Nasts, the organization set on capturing the supernatural teens.

     The quick pace of the narrative will keep readers engaged as the teen characters come to uncover the secrets of the main two Cabals who are responsible for controlling their lives and are also set controlling their entire existences. The Canadian landscape shifts in The Rising as Maya and friends travel from the forests of Vancouver Island into the city of Vancouver. Maya’s shape shifting is also strongly affected by the urban landscape that they end up in as she cannot come to hide her uncontrollable cougar form easily while in the city. Maya’s supernatural identity continues to develop in this final novel as she comes to understand how to manage her shape shifting capabilities.

     While The Gathering and The Calling were strongly based in action, The Rising is strong in revealing relationships and connections between characters and how they affect one another in the strange supernatural world that they have come to uncover. Readers can look forward to Maya’s discovery of her estranged biological father’s role as an employee of a Cabal who is set on reuniting and helping Maya and her friends. Readers, along with Maya, will question whether his intentions are positive or negative in the supernatural teens’ fate. Discoveries about Maya’s long lost twin brother are also a significant part of Maya’s emerging supernatural identity in the novel. Also the love triangle that continues to develop between Maya, Rafe, and Daniel throughout the trilogy will also have teens eager to keep reading on.

     Fans of Armstrong's two previous novels in the "Darkest Powers" trilogy can look forward to the connection between Project Phoenix and Project Genesis (from the "Darkest Powers”) that is made in this novel as the protagonists uncover secrets about what they are capable of and whom they can trust in the supernatural world. In The Rising, Armstrong provides an exceptional recap of the previous discoveries found in The Gathering and The Calling without being repetitive. The novel can also be read and understood fairly well without previous knowledge of the events that preceded the concluding work. Although The Rising has a satisfactory ending, it also leaves open the possibility of a new trilogy that many fans of the series will likely anticipate.

Highly Recommended.

Vasso Tassiopoulos is a graduate of the Master of Arts program in Children's Literature at the University of British Columbia and currently works in an assortment of childcare settings in Toronto, ON.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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