A vigorous and immersive vampire tale set against the twilight of the Romanovs.
An alternative history horror novel reimagines the fall of the Romanovs.
In December 1916, members of the Russian imperial family are prisoners in their own palace as the country teeters on the brink of revolution. The empress Alexandra and her son, Alexei, are plagued by a mysterious disease that causes them to crave blood and abhor sunlight. Alexei is visited in his sleep by “the shadow man,” who bids him to kill his father, Czar Nicholas. Meanwhile, an apocalyptic cult called the Khlysts has been appearing in St. Petersburg in growing numbers—and rumor has it that its members include some close to the imperial family. A strannik, or religious pilgrim, named Grigori Rasputin arrives in the city on a train from Bucharest carrying no papers or baggage. He has returned to oversee a venture he began long ago with the kidnapping of Alexandra—a plan of great consequence to Rasputin and his coven of vampires. St. Petersburg coroner Rurik Kozlov is convinced that the murdered bodies passing through his lab are the work of the Sleepwalker, a serial killer operating in Romania two decades earlier, though the local authorities are unwilling to admit as much. Rurik knows that there has been a hunt for evidence of Desmodus draculae—the god of the Khlysts—for years. In Rurik’s quest to stop the evil force, he finds an ally in Prince Felix Yusupov, the loving uncle of Alexei. If they fail, it is not only the Romanovs who will suffer, but all of Russia—and maybe the world. Gage’s prose is well calibrated for this Gothic series opener, blending imperial courtliness with vampire grisliness. “You will see I am a man of truth when your carriage crosses the Liteyny Bridge and continues up Bolshoy Sampsonievskiy,” Rasputin warns two aristocratic sisters upon meeting them. “Far outside of Saint Petersburg there is a cabin in the woods where your murderers await to hack you to bits.” There are a few moments when the book’s violence slides into poor taste, but on the whole, the story is a highly satisfying merging of horror and political milieus, wringing a bit of fun—and a whole lot of blood—out of one of the most chaotic and tragic periods of modern history.
A vigorous and immersive vampire tale set against the twilight of the Romanovs.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-578-62713-7
Page Count: 438
Publisher: KDK 12, Inc
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.
The miseries of the Depression and Dust Bowl years shape the destiny of a Texas family.
“Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when I felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.” We meet Elsa Wolcott in Dalhart, Texas, in 1921, on the eve of her 25th birthday, and wind up with her in California in 1936 in a saga of almost unrelieved woe. Despised by her shallow parents and sisters for being sickly and unattractive—“too tall, too thin, too pale, too unsure of herself”—Elsa escapes their cruelty when a single night of abandon leads to pregnancy and forced marriage to the son of Italian immigrant farmers. Though she finds some joy working the land, tending the animals, and learning her way around Mama Rose's kitchen, her marriage is never happy, the pleasures of early motherhood are brief, and soon the disastrous droughts of the 1930s drive all the farmers of the area to despair and starvation. Elsa's search for a better life for her children takes them out west to California, where things turn out to be even worse. While she never overcomes her low self-esteem about her looks, Elsa displays an iron core of character and courage as she faces dust storms, floods, hunger riots, homelessness, poverty, the misery of migrant labor, bigotry, union busting, violent goons, and more. The pedantic aims of the novel are hard to ignore as Hannah embodies her history lesson in what feels like a series of sepia-toned postcards depicting melodramatic scenes and clichéd emotions.
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2501-7860-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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