The Deep
It has been almost a year since Nyla Evans moved from Ramstein Air Base in Germany to Brooklyn, and she’s still searching for a way to belong. It doesn’t help that Nyla has started to hallucinate while walking the city streets, and things get even stranger when a man named Osiris offers to introduce Nyla to others who have similar “gifts.” When she refuses, her friend D is kidnapped and held in the deep until Nyla agrees to let Osiris guide her underground. There, miles beneath Brooklyn, Nyla meets Lada—the mother who abandoned her a decade ago. Within days Nyla finds herself at the center of a battle between good and evil, and she must learn to wield the astonishing power she inherited from her mysterious mother.
6″ x 9″ | 176 pages
Rosetta Press
$10.00
ISBN-13: 978-1492902119
This is the second installment in Elliott’s thrilling fantasy trilogy that began with [Ship of Souls]. The effects of race, rape, and complicated family dynamics on teens are thoroughly explored. This volume will appeal to fans of realistic fiction and fantasy titles. VERDICT A good selection for YA shelves.
~ School Library Journal
In the past several years, Zetta Elliott has emerged as a major author of speculative fiction featuring African-American protagonists…The Deep does lead readers on “fabulous adventures,” and Elliott deserves applause and support for making this extraordinary story available now to fans of Ship of Souls and other readers at the middle and high school level looking for tales of ordinary kids who find themselves superheroes.
~ The Pirate Tree: Social Justice and Children’s Literature
“For such a short novel, The Deep, an Urban Fantasy with contemporary YA trappings packs a lot: from the introduction to a whole new, hidden underground world and a secret group that keeps evil at bay to the idea that what said group might be doing is not entirely that black and white; from expanding on the previous book by continuing Dmitri’s story but also focusing on Nyla’s own including her past, her present, her parent’s own struggles, her love life, her developing magical powers…The book greatest strengths are Zetta Elliott’s (always) beautiful writing and the careful, powerful characterisation of Nyla and of those who surround her. Zetta Elliott is at her best when writing about characters’ emotional make-up and Nyla’s relationship with her family, her stepmother, her boyfriend (and his family) are beautifully portrayed.”
~ The Book Smugglers