Fans will welcome Rice’s return to the realm of eccentric immortal predators.
Second in Rice’s series (The Wolf Gift, 2012) featuring a cultured pack of do-gooder werewolves.
Reuben, a newly minted Man Wolf, has moved into the Northern California mansion he inherited from the lovely, mysterious and now late Marchent. The mansion, situated in a vast woodland, is also home to several older (in some cases ancient) men who are, when the occasion requires, werewolves. Among these “Distinguished Gentlemen” are Marchent’s uncle Felix, a giant named Sergei, the well-mannered Thibault, and the leader and conscience of the pack, Margon. The Gentleman are inducting the beginner werewolves, including Stuart, a young gay man, and Reuben’s latest ladylove, Laura, into new, immortal life. The group is preparing for a gala Christmas party they hope to make an annual tradition. The party will be followed by the midwinter rites, which the werewolves (known as Morphenkinder) have celebrated since time immemorial and which, in some packs, involves human sacrifice. Not Margon’s pack, however. His men (and women) wolves have a special instinct for sniffing out and mauling evildoers, particularly those who abuse and molest children. In fact, one night, after Reuben’s wolf persona emerges involuntarily, he rescues a kidnapped little girl, then devours most of her captor. The Gentlemen must put the public off the scent of their true identities, whence the party. But Reuben’s human entanglements pose complications. Marchent, who was murdered, is haunting Reuben, and Felix must enlist the aid of another supernatural group, the Forest Gentry, a kind of ethereal, chamois-clad tribe, to entice her troubled spirit away from the house. Reuben’s hated ex-girlfriend is about to give birth to his baby, and his father has decided to temporarily move into the mansion, where he will be the only resident who is not only mortal, but not privy to the werewolves’ secret. This complex fantasy world relies on an elaborate substructure of lore and history, and the action slows as points of exposition are repetitiously belabored.
Fans will welcome Rice’s return to the realm of eccentric immortal predators.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-34996-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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