An epic tale of conflict, sorcery, and religion.
Maidman presents a fantasy series starter set during a brutal war steeped in magic and myth.
At the forefront of the tale is Claire, an immortal in an indeterminate future whose gold palanquin machine can fold space and time. A malfunction sends it hurtling halfway across the world and thousands of years in the past, right in the middle of a military conflict that sees King Ambrosius the Ninth taking over the city of Genova. The king’s general, Marcus Irenaeus Diophantus, is an elite fighter who’s tormented by the terrible things he’s done during wartime. He discovers the crashed palanquin as well as Claire, who’s now just a shadow of her former self: “She was diminished now to mere humanity. She remembered only human things.” Claire soon declares herself a “patricia of Zanzibar” and helps to broker peace throughout the kingdom. But even in peace, danger lurks—whether it’s from the Constantines, who care only for profit and always find it in conflict, or the high priest of Florence, Reburrus, who views Claire with nothing but suspicion. Among the tangled politics, Marcus dedicates himself to helping Claire explore ai Ctesiphôn, a tower in the middle of Florence that only shows itself to certain people and “can be reached from nowhere. Seek the foot of ai Ctesiphôn, and you will walk all day long….” This magical tower may, however, hold the secret to Claire’s return home. Over the course of this first series entry, Maidman stocks the narrative with a wide range of complex characters; indeed, the work begins with a list of players that spans four pages. However, the extensive cast helps to shape a labyrinthine plot that’s presented with patience and sophistication. The work is relatively lengthy at more than 400 pages, but the dialogue remains consistently sharp, and the pace is consistently brisk throughout. Maidman’s remarkable attention to detail—regarding his characters, their kingdoms, and in-universe wizardry—results in a world that audiences won’t want to leave anytime soon.
An epic tale of conflict, sorcery, and religion.Pub Date: June 4, 2023
ISBN: 9798987597811
Page Count: 552
Publisher: Tower Books Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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