An elaborately imagined yet not quite satisfying fable of loss and isolation.
In a remote fairy-tale town where mothers keep disappearing, one young woman makes a run for it.
“How does a motherless mother mother? How does she know how, or does she simply not know?...I reminded myself it wasn't true I was motherless. I had a mother.” Like all the children in her foggy, vaguely Alpine village, Vera was just a girl when her mother literally vanished into thin air. The same thing had just happened to her best friend, Ana, the week before, but for reasons Vera will never understand, this commonality ends their friendship rather than cements it. In a complete departure from her debut, Saint X (2020), Schaitkin’s sophomore novel is a fabulist narrative with Shirley Jackson overtones and Margaret Atwood themes; other writers working in this vein include Sophie Mackintosh, Leni Zumas, and Claire Oshetsky. The author devotes a good bit of time to worldbuilding, filling in the sights, smells, foods, and customs of the town, from the creamery where doe’s milk is made into cheese to the Alpina Hotel, where Vera’s father takes her and her friends for tea every year on her birthday and local newlyweds get a night in the honeymoon suite. Despite the many spooky aspects of life in the village, an unstated prohibition against leaving has seemingly been effective so far. Though she feared she might spend her life as a spinster, working beside her father in the town’s photography shop, Vera ends up a wife and then a mother, finding more passion in these roles than she dreamed possible. But one day, she sees that her image is blurred in a photo from her daughter's birthday party; soon after, she loses control of her hands. Knowing “the affliction” is upon her, she bolts. Vera’s Rumspringa stretches out about a decade, it seems, motored by dream logic through a series of weird situations whose allegorical import is unclear. Thankfully, the road eventually doubles back to questions left open in the village, some of which are answered.
An elaborately imagined yet not quite satisfying fable of loss and isolation.Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-21963-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing, action-packed sequel with a compelling cast.
A woman must undergo fearsome trials to free the imprisoned Titans of Greek myth in Owen’s fantasy novel, the second in a series.
Advancing from minor office clerk in the Order of Thieves to Queen of the Underworld, Lyra Keres’ star should be rising. But thanks to Cronos, King of the Titans, she and her longtime friend and fellow thief Boone have been ensnared in a new challenge beneath the earth: Hot on the heels of winning the twisted Crucible Games, Lyra—who has recently been granted goddess powers—finds herself trapped in Tartarus. Separated from her beloved Hades, she must liberate the fearsome Titans from seven Locks to restore the cosmic balance. As Lyra progresses through the Locks engineered by the Gods—each as tricky and lethal as the last—the pressure mounts as the Titans repeatedly remind her, “You will be our savior.” Rhea, the wife of Cronos, reveals that Lyra began this quest “a hundred and fifty years ago,” adding further devastation to the task at hand; the knowledge is helpful, but also painful, as Lyra reflects, “Suddenly, I don’t want to know that it’s real. Because then I have to contemplate how many times I might have ended up in Tartarus already.” As she materializes in and out of time pockets, Lyra sees Hades’ troubled childhood unfold and struggles not to intervene to save the man she loves. In this second entry in the author’s Crucible series, following The Games Gods Play (2024), Lyra’s cynical quips continue to make her an engaging protagonist. Her inner monologues are balanced with hope, love, and longing for Hades as she meets various versions of him. While resilient, Owen’s heroine is also vulnerable (“Was I his pawn in more ways than I ever realized?”). Her introspection effectively contrasts with the simmering rage and restraint in Hades’ chapters. The supporting Titans are given more depth than the traditional myths allow, weaving a knotty family fabric for the reader to navigate alongside Lyra.
An engrossing, action-packed sequel with a compelling cast.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781649378538
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Entangled: Red Tower Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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