A captivating page-turner that should whet appetites for Book 3 of this fantasy series.
After world-shaking events, a soldier, prison warden, and heretic search for answers as war brews in this second volume of a trilogy.
In the realm called Matteo’s lands, the long-prophesied Day of Ascendancy has arrived, and despite the skepticism of many, the world really does turn briefly upside down, causing much loss and destruction. According to sacred writings, there now remain 100 days until the third Internecion, a time of conflict that is already beginning in some areas. Book 1 followed the fortunes of the Truthseeker (Sebastian Harvellian, a religious acolyte), the Traitor (Princess Hella, a diplomat), and the Imbecile (Darian Bronté, a soldier). Each was in some way wrongly accused or misunderstood. Book 2 takes up the stories of three related characters: the Good Son, Baldric Bronté, Darian’s brother; the Jailor, Zahir, who accompanies Hella; and the Naustic, Nala Réalla, a friend of Sebastian’s. Over the course of the novel, these characters trace difficult journeys, their paths converging on the camp where Sebastian is held prisoner. Along the way, a deep-laid and genocidal conspiracy comes to light as well as questions regarding certain deficits in the ecosystem of Matteo’s lands. Perhaps the answer is, as Sebastian thinks, in the oldest Book of Canons at the top of the Snail Mountains. Things look dark as the Third Internecion approaches. Readers who stuck with the unresolved cliffhanger ending of Book 1 should be glad they did, because Otto (Detonation, 2018, etc.) carries through the promise of his compelling worldbuilding in this second fantasy outing. Rich details stoke avid curiosity about mysteries still to be revealed. For example, if the Purveyor is correct and certain processes in this world exist to restore missing nutrients, why is the ecosystem unbalanced? Why the gravity shift, or whatever it was? What happened in the past that’s left its strange traces, such as mounds of bone and flesh working their way to the surface? Equally intriguing are the author’s well-developed and deeply engaging characters, with their moral dilemmas, need to survive, and questions of their own.
A captivating page-turner that should whet appetites for Book 3 of this fantasy series.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 135
Publisher: Sagis Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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