Next book

GHOSTS OF ALBION: ACCURSED

Demons, bodice-ripping passion and some good old murky London gloom; all one can ask for in a dark night’s reading.

Demons from the subcontinent threaten Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

Actress Benson (Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) teams up with journeyman horror novelist Golden (The Boys Are Back in Town, 2004, etc.) in this hefty, hormone-stuffed novel, likely the first of a series. Based on the BBC Web series, the story is set in Victorian London, where siblings William and Tamara Swift are young magicians charged with guarding England from the forces of evil and keeping watch over the ancient magic in their domicile Ludlow House. It’s a nice sort of place, if you don’t mind the ghosts of a lustful Lord Byron and the flagrantly naked and combative Celtic warrior queen Bodicea, not to mention the body of their father, chained to a chair upstairs, likely dead and possessed by the spirit of a malevolent demon. With all this going on, William and Tamara still find ways to stay focused. The somewhat priggish William is busy courting the strong-willed Sophia, which involves a lot of impassioned necking, while Tamara writes under a pseudonym and longs after the rakish John Haversham. Meanwhile, dark things are stirring along the river wharfs and East End slums, where women—mostly Indian—are being forcibly impregnated and giving birth to loathsome creatures. Also, a number of reptilian beasts skulking in the dark are murdering any who cross their path. If this were a job for only William and Tamara, the Queen might be in some trouble, as they are still young and haven’t perfected their magic. Fortunately, they have a number of well-meaning ghosts—as well as one deadly handsome vampire Tamara had a thing for—on their side.

Demons, bodice-ripping passion and some good old murky London gloom; all one can ask for in a dark night’s reading.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-345-47130-X

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 282


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

Next book

DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 282


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

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

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • Booker Prize Winner

Next book

THE TESTAMENTS

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • Booker Prize Winner

Atwood goes back to Gilead.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Nan A. Talese

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

Close Quickview