A sometimes turgid, sometimes beguiling fantasy of spiritual awakening through creativity.
A woodcarver’s sacred project unites Druids and Christians in artistic communion in this soulful fantasy adventure.
It’s the year 99 C.E., and the Gaulish townsfolk of Carnotum—present-day site of the cathedral of Chartres in France—are suffering under the jackboot of the Roman Empire, which is intent on stamping out worship of their Celtic gods. When the Black Virgin, an ancient wooden statue of a divine mother and child, gets vandalized, the Druidic priest Bryok asks young woodcarver Caradoc to sculpt a replacement. The assignment poses dangers—he’s menaced by Carnotum’s chieftain Turi, who wants to carve the statue himself—and pitches Caradoc into a labyrinth of occult experience. He is supervised by a veiled woman named Lavena, aka Crunarch, “the keeper of the flame,” who provides him with candles, lightning-felled wood, consecrated tools, and a studio in a forest grotto and drives off marauding Romans with her whip. To help him visualize the Black Virgin, Caradoc consults Kailex, a seeress who goes into a trance to narrate a prehistoric Celtic migration out of an Atlantis-like drowned continent, and the bard Érimón, who sings of the baptism of the Black Virgin. With the sculpture in hand, Caradoc learns that Lavena has been captured by the Romans. He rushes to save her from slavery. Müller’s yarn blends Christian legend with pagan mythology to assimilate the Virgin Mary into a tradition of “earth mothers,” from the Greek goddess Artemis to the Egyptian deity Isis. Apart from some scuffles and a vivid, well-drawn scene of a degrading slave auction, the drama here is mainly emotional, religious, and very female centered. The novel’s mystical effusions—“With the blood from the sacred crucible, the blood that is my blood, that is His blood, that is our blood, I dedicate this place to the eternal feminine within all human beings”—sometimes go on too long. But Müller’s workmanlike, slyly lyrical prose—“he picked up a handful of tiny pebbles and threw them indifferently over the lake, listening to them plop, disrupting the water’s flawless surface and sounding like a clutch of elves clapping”—gives an enchanting folkloric sparkle to Caradoc’s world.
A sometimes turgid, sometimes beguiling fantasy of spiritual awakening through creativity.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73401-702-1
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Alkion Press
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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