An expansive, edgy genre piece whose earnest familial theme shines.
In this prequel installment of Markoff’s (The Deadbringer, 2016) fantasy series, a mercenary protects his young nephew, a member of a despised, largely decimated people, from operatives who wish to kill him.
Eutau Vidal made a promise to his sister that he would look after her son, Kira, before she died in labor. Taking care of Kira entails typical child-rearing duties, such as ensuring that he’s well-fed and warm, but also involves concealing Kira’s gray skin—the sign that he’s part of a race called Deadbringers. Kira’s skin rots everything it touches, save for Eutau. In the land of Moenda, the Ascendancy united all the myriad races under one power, while also initiating the Purging against Deadbringers, who, among other things, can bring the dead back to life. Although the South is predominantly free of Deadbringers, Sanctifiers continue to search for any that remain in hiding. Eutau keeps Kira close and helps him overcome his fear of spirits that only he can see and hear. The two encounter an amiable soul, J’kara, and later join her in her home city of Florinia, where a lack of Deadbringers has begotten far-less-cautious Ascendancy members. But Eutau soon craves the freedom he once had in his mercenary days. Markoff’s novella, which takes place 15 years prior to the events of her previous book, is a laudable series forerunner, but also works well as a stand-alone work. It’s impressive how much information is packed into the short tale, including background on the Purging and the traits of various peoples, such as the horns and talons of the Ro’Erden, and Eutau’s pupil-less eyes. Nevertheless, the uncle-nephew bond is the story’s strongest quality; ever protective Eutau is perfectly suited to the father figure role, even if he occasionally regrets his pledge to his sister. Kira, meanwhile, tackles mundane obstacles (such as when his peers call his skin ugly) as well as supernatural ones, all in endearing, phonetic speech: “I pwomise, I’ll be good,” he assures Eutau.
An expansive, edgy genre piece whose earnest familial theme shines.Pub Date: April 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9971951-3-2
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Tomes & Coffee Press
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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