The Loss of the Burying Ground
by J. Anderson Coats
High School    Candlewick    288 pp.
9/24    9781536232387    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781536240023    $18.99

When the Burying Ground ship is destroyed while carrying peace delegations from warring nations Dura and Ariminthia, there are only two survivors. Cast up on a tiny island, Cora, a Duran, lives using all she’s learned from “invasion readiness training”; Vivienne, maid to an Ariminthian princess, builds a shrine and believes that the drowned princess, sea, and island are conspiring to care for her and protect her country. When the two girls meet, their very different perspectives prove to be bemusing and illuminating, so much so that the political situation in their countries looks quite different to them by the time they are rescued. Together, they devise a way to fulfill the peace treaty that was the Burying Ground’s mission, only to find that powerful interests from both nations connive to perpetuate war. Coats engages vital contemporary concerns—financial and military interests, environmental heedlessness, political authoritarianism, dis- and misinformation, forms of resistance—within this intricately plotted, brightly crafted fantasy. Machinations, plots, counterplots, and surprise revelations keep the momentum going right up to a cliffhanger of a last line. That and the two stalwart, earnest, ornery, and devoted protagonists should leave readers eager for a sequel.

From the ">November/December 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.