The Kings Are Already Here

This book is unlike any YA novel I have read. It is incredibly well-written, very literary, and still accessible to a wide variety of readers because the main characters are a boy and a girl, and because it's so short.Phebe Knight is training to be a ballerina. Normally she's very dedicated, but lately she has trouble concentrating. Her teachers and mother decide a change of scenery may help, and they send her to Geneva, Switzerland to stay with her father for three months. Phebe's father is a diplomat, and this is how Phebe meets Nikolai.Nikolai is a fifteen year old chess genius who has recently become estranged from his father who pushed him to extremes to be able to win and make money. Nikolai left his father to pursue his freedom and to study chess with the legendary, elusive, unstable Stas Vlajnik. Phebe is unsuccessful in her desire to focus on ballet, but she becomes, possibly for the first time, genuinely caring towards others. She finally begins to accept things about her father, and spends all her time with Nikolai, studying chess, how he thinks, and trying to help him find Vlajnik. The second half of the book is spent all over Europe as they travel from chess tournaments searching for Vlajnik. The developments in the characters are nuanced and beautifully and truthfully written. When I finished this book I wanted to read everything by the author, and read up more on chess.

I was afraid I wouldn't like this as much as Freymann-Weyr's other books, MY HEARTBEAT and WHEN I WAS OLDER... but I was totally hooked. Even before I got to college I knew that the choices I make mean something else has to be given up -- and this is the first novel I've read that deals with that: the cost of being committed to something. I like that there are no simple "right" answers in this book ... that it's thoughtful and yet also suspenseful and funny. I hope she'll write another book soon...

I've always been a sucker for books about gifted teens, but usually they are gifted in music. I found the combination and comparison of chess and ballet fascinating. The author doesn't fall for any of the easy traps like trying to make a love story here - though it is not that her teens are uninterested in sex or that they don't sense the possiblity of each other. She shows that becoming the best at anything involves a price and only we can decide if that price is worth it. Sometimes the alternating first person narrative, was a little hard to follow, but ultimately this was a satisfying book

I adored this book. Both the characters and the places they go to are beautifully and intricately described. I loved being taken from the dance studio in New York to Switzerland and then all over on a European odyssey to find the chess Grandmaster. I knew almost nothing about chess or ballet before I read Kings and I learned so much. I could feel the tension at the barre and the chess table even though I am neither a dancer nor a chess player. The relationship between Phebe and Kolya is so complicated and fragile. I really wanted there to be romance between the two of them, but somehow it's all the more interesting that there isn't. The only thing I am sincerely hoping for is that the author will write a sequel. I am too in love with the characters not to know what happens next. Both young and old will find this a wonderful story. I highly recommend it for anyone. As a p.s., I think this would make a gorgeous movie...