A fresh twist on an old sea myth, complete with magic, intrigue, and plenty of old-school adventures.
A novel offers a historical reimagining of ancient tribes, the story of Atlantis, and the man who would become known as Poseidon, Bridler of the Sea.
Donnogen has had many names. His Amma dubbed him Little Leopard. The band of raiders he took up with after the Sea People drove away the mammoths that his tribe relied upon for survival called him Stag. The witch he paid to learn his true name referred to him simply as “Thief.” Fleeing from this revelation, Donnogen leads his group across the sea on a desperate quest to find a way to return the mammoths to their hunting grounds. He seeks a bountiful “otherworld.” A friendly stranger tells Donnogen: “The land is rich in everything a man needs. Fresh mountain springs. Green forests with delicious fruits and every kind of animal to hunt….And there’s hills rich in gold and precious gems.” Donnogen’s journey to a strange kingdom will bring him loss and force him to compromise his honor, but it will also deliver opportunity and the possibility of love. Cleito is playing her own game of power and deception at the court of her half brother King Xaneheth. Donnogen, or Poseidon as she names him, presents her with an opportunity to advance her own plans, although danger lurks as well, including involving her own heart. Peters (Banished Sons of Poseidon, 2015, etc.) brings imagination and touches of the fantastic to this tale. The inclusion of the mythic gives what might otherwise be a dry, alternate-history narrative a nice burst of the unexpected. Bits of the Atlantis legend mix with stranger elements, such as crystal skulls, barbarian gods, and exploits worthy of Greek myth. The characters are larger than life as well. Poseidon is a mighty barbarian leader, and Cleito’s a commendably strong woman with a ruthless streak. Alternating between Poseidon’s and Cleito’s points of view also gives the story a wonderful counterpoint while illuminating two very separate cultures. Unfortunately, the distinctness of the cultures does not always come through in the characters’ dialogue. But the clash of different ways of living definitely reverberates and only adds to the drama.
A fresh twist on an old sea myth, complete with magic, intrigue, and plenty of old-school adventures.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 251
Publisher: EDGE-Lite
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2016
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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