An impressive fantasy sequel featuring a brave apprentice.
This second volume of a YA series focuses on a teenage girl, her gyrfalcon, and a promise made to her grandfather.
At the age of 11, Brittney Eldras stole a gyrfalcon egg from a nest. She raised the bird to be her friend in her lonely home valley of the Heartland. Two years later, Britt has lost her parents in an avalanche. She and her gyrfalcon, Tatty Mog, are partners in life, hunting and growing up together. One day, her grandfather Winchal Eldras, who is a Wayfinder and able to locate anything, claims that he no longer hears the Finder’s Bell. It should be in the city of G’il Rim, to the south. Granfa, as Britt calls him, passes the Finding on to her, beginning her apprenticeship. She must now venture to G’il Rim and search for the Bell. Increasing her challenges are the Zendi, conquerors who hold the Heartland in an economic death grip. They’re a society that worships albinism and has outlawed any but themselves from owning a gyrfalcon. Britt must also beware the Zendi’s intense superstitions and a prophecy revolving around the deaths of seven court ravens. Should the ravens die, war would recommence in the Heartland. In this sequel, Pattison (Pollen, 2019, etc.) delivers a charismatic YA fantasy that features striking worldbuilding centered on the bond between people and animals. She includes veterinary facts, including details about bumble foot, which occurs when a bird cuts itself with an overlong talon and becomes infected. There are also the Tazi hounds, “a breed of royal and telepathic dogs,” like Lady Jetje. The Zendi prince, Oran Ziggmaccus, is a fabulous villain whose code keeps him from cheating at cards yet he has no problem whipping whomever offends him. These elements (and many more) come together in a visionary palette over which the author executes fine control. In one subtly ominous scene, “albinos enter the middle door” of a shrine while “everyone else goes to a side door.” As the drama crescendos, a key component from the previous volume comes into play. A gorgeous finale illustrates the depths of humanity’s companionship with animals.
An impressive fantasy sequel featuring a brave apprentice.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62944-123-8
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Mims House
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
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