First sheaf in a new series by Rice, picking up where The Tale of the Body Thief (1992) left off and telling of 2,000-year-old Pandora, who is seduced in Paris by newly-fanged David Talbot, an elderly scholar, into writing her memoirs. Followers of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Count Saint-Germain vampire historicals will fred themselves on familiar ground in Rice's Rome of Caesar Augustus. Remember that the stronger half of Rice's recent Servant of the Bones (1996), about the Wandering Babylonian Ghost Azriel, gave her purple pen free rein in limning the hanging garden, golden passageways, and other ornaments of Babylon. Similarly now, as she turns from modern Paris to ancient Rome, her writing lifts from gruelingly sloppy hackwork to tightly engaging prose, perhaps because this material marries research to make-believe: Give her some ground to stand on, and she tells a good story. Here, Pandora is 10, Marius 25—and not yet a vampire—when the two first meet in her father's palazzo. Twenty years and a pair of failed marriages later, when her father is attacked by Augustus and she must flee to Antioch, Pandora finds herself overcome by dreams of bloodlust. She asks a priestess in Antioch: Do these blood dreams come from the goddess Isis? Then she meets Marius, whom she's adored from girlhood on, in the temple of Isis and goes to live with him. But Marius is now the caretaker of two living mummies or statues that Pandora mistakes for Isis and Osiris (or Hems), and Isis/Akasha bestows on her the dark gift in the novel's most ecstatic scene. Marius exhorts her, though, about her detestation of blood-drinkers and swears never to make another (which requires exchange of blood with the host). Forever fighting, the rational Marius and emotional Pandora care for the evil gods for two centuries, through the spread of Christianity, and then part, with a sequel (Armand) promised. Forget Violin (1997). This is Rice in top romantic form, despite a slippery page here and there.
Pub Date: March 19, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-40159-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998
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
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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