An entertaining, page-turning historical romance that may appeal to fans of Eloisa James.
In Warfield’s (The Renegade Wife, 2016, etc.) latest series installment, an English duke in 1838 finds political intrigue and a second chance at love while investigating the opium trade in China.
Charles Wheatly, the Duke of Murnane, believed that he had everything until his world collapsed under a cloud of tragedy and scandal. Desperate for a distraction, he’s intrigued when his mentor, the Duke of Sudbury, presents him with an offer from Queen Victoria. Rogue traders are selling opium throughout China, and the Chinese are pushing back against the traders. The queen wants Charles to go to Asia and investigate the situation. When he arrives in Macau, he’s startled to encounter Zambak Hayden, the Duke of Sudbury’s daughter. Her brother, John Thornton “Thorn” Hayden, is floundering as a clerk for the East India Company, and she intends to protect him. As Charles’ investigation intensifies, Zambak discovers that Thorn is also addicted to opium. While Charles and Zambak work to identify the key players in the opium trade, they find themselves falling in love. Their connection is soon tested when political tensions in the region threaten to escalate into military conflict, and Charles’ estranged wife, Julia, resurfaces to wreak havoc on his reputation. The third installment of Warfield’s Children of Empire series is a keenly observed historical romance, replete with detailed settings, dynamic characters, and a multilayered plot. It’s set in the months leading up to the First Opium War, and although the story is fictional, Warfield references historical figures throughout, including English superintendent Charles Elliot and Chinese official Lin Zexu. Warfield excels at creating well-drawn main characters; Charles is shown to be an honorable man who’s trying to rebuild his life and career after the death of his son, and Zambak is depicted as intelligent, strong-willed, and determined to live life on her own terms. The author deftly balances the romance with the political intrigue of the opium trade and Charles’ quest to end his disastrous marriage.
An entertaining, page-turning historical romance that may appeal to fans of Eloisa James.Pub Date: July 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68291-766-4
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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