Fantasy fans will likely enjoy Anya’s adventures, which feature novel supernatural elements in a modern setting.
Finnish-Australian author Kuivalainen offers a debut urban fantasy about a young girl battling dark forces.
After wolves shockingly attack Anya’s grandfather in the middle of summer, she sits grieving in a local café. She lives in a village bordering Russia and Karelia that’s “so small that it didn’t even have an official name,” so she’s naturally surprised when a stranger greets her in English; she’s doubly shocked when he introduces himself as Tuoni, the ruler of the Underworld. He explains to Anya that her grandfather was a shaman with great powers, and that she also has magical ability that “needs to be utilised, or it will not only be a disaster for you but for your whole world.” It turns out that there’s a gate between Earth and the Otherworld, which just so happens to border Anya’s farm. Anya becomes aware that the wolves that killed her grandfather were no ordinary predators, and she knows that her task ahead will be a formidable one. As she confronts evil forces, she’s aided by Yvan, an ancient prince who can transform into a firebird and other supernatural beings that Anya thought only existed in fairy tales. Several characters enjoy drinking alcohol, including Anya, who at one point wants “vodka, anything alcoholic, to calm her scattered nerves.” The book’s dialogue can be both obvious and clunky, as when a character states, “I can’t make you stay but it’s going to be a shit fight and I would feel better having you fighting at my side.” However, the story incorporates a fair share of surprises, and never fails to provide new scenes featuring bloodshed and strange new creatures (“It flopped, bloody as a newborn onto the ground and stretched its wings. It started to cry and grew to the size of a horse”). The beasts, in particular, help this story to move beyond the genre’s many clichés, and their complexity extends well beyond typical fantasy creatures.
Fantasy fans will likely enjoy Anya’s adventures, which feature novel supernatural elements in a modern setting.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1503093881
Page Count: 518
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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