A creatively twisted adventure, though its protagonist can be unsettling.
From author Kindall (Pearl, 2015, etc.) comes a Western about one man’s mission in the 1800s.
It’s 1854, and Missourian Didier Rain makes his living by transporting various items to the West. He has delivered “stained-glass windows, a brood mare, porcelain dolls” and even “a lawyer as far as Fort Boise.” But nothing could have prepared Rain for his latest assignment. A Mormon man hires Rain to transport a young bride-to-be to a place called the City of Rocks. The catch is that the bride is not simply young, she’s a baby. The baby’s name is Virtue, and if Rain can complete his task of bringing her to the Prophet Nehi, he will be awarded $30,000. Rain is given a crash course in diaper changing, a goat to provide milk for Virtue, and an assurance that he is the “True Deliverer,” who will undoubtedly succeed. To align things with the guiding prophecy (and inherently make the journey even more difficult), Rain is not allowed to carry a weapon, not even for hunting. And he shouldn’t even think about partaking in liquor, coffee, or tobacco. It’s a strange and dangerous mission, but Rain is a strange and dangerous man. He speaks several languages, has a penchant for poetry, and has quite a troubling family history. Rain is originally from Cherbourg and to say that his past is haunted by circumstances of a Freudian nature would be an understatement. He has, in other words, not come to the American West simply for the weather. As Rain says of the event that forced him to flee France, “My life seemed over just as it was set to begin.” That anyone would send such a man (unarmed no less) with only a goat to provide milk for a baby while attempting to cross a vast stretch of wild country stretches the limits of believable fiction. It’s a quest with events that range from the silly (Rain’s horses seem to communicate with him) to the disturbing (a group of buffalo hunters force Rain to wear a dress followed by, as Rain describes it, an evening of “raucous indulgence in my orificial endowments.”) Our antihero has a peculiar, poetic way of speaking. He describes the way “water snakes fornicated in the lily pads, their golden eyes following us askance as we passed.” Rain is not entirely unlikable, but he would undoubtedly make a poor dinner guest. This novel shows an Old West that’s much weirder than standard tales of cowboys and Indians would leave one to believe. Certainly there must be room among John Wayne–style heroes for a multilingual transporter who seems fairly indifferent to his own sexual assault. Few things can be said to be standard about this tale, and the strangeness gives way to suspense in the final pages. Rain winds up on the cusp of completing his mission even if completion might not be all it is cracked up to be. Virtue’s fate becomes a nail-biter, but first the reader must endure miles and miles of seemingly endless Rain.
A creatively twisted adventure, though its protagonist can be unsettling.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9909328-9-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Diving Boy Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
