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OVER THE WINE-DARK SEA

Name: OVER THE WINE-DARK SEA
Author: H.N. Turteltaub
ISBN: 0-312-87660-2

by H.N. Turteltaub ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2001

Aristotle meets Homer in this original tale of ideas and adventure.

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Turteltaub (the pseudonym of historical-fantasist Harry Turtledove, Colonization, 2001, etc.) takes an excursion to ancient Greece. In 310 b.c., Greece still dominates the Western (and much of the Eastern) world, but there are some ominous clouds on the horizon: Alexander the Great is dead, his Empire is overextended, and a power struggle among his generals threatens to erupt into civil war. We see all of this through the eyes of the sailor Menedemos and his cousin and sidekick, the mathematician and philosopher Sostratos. Commanding the galley-ship Aphrodite (owned by their merchant fathers), Menedemos and Sostratos are less interested in earning money for their families than they are in capturing fame for themselves. They set out on a longer course than they have ever attempted before, far from their native Rhodes all the way to Italy and a little-known barbarian town called Rome. Sostratos discovers peoples, languages, plants, and animals unheard of in Greece, while the wily Menedemos harbors dreams of glory that go beyond simple riches to reach at the kind of power that was Alexander’s downfall. With a cargo of untold rarities captured from the new world of Rome, they try to find their way home to enjoy the fame that awaits them. But there are a few obstacles along the way. . . .

Aristotle meets Homer in this original tale of ideas and adventure.

Pub Date: July 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-312-87660-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Forge

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
OWLS TO ATHENS
by H.N. Turteltaub

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SACRED LAND
by H.N. Turteltaub

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GRYPHON’S SKULL
by H.N. Turteltaub

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THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

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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

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK TO SCREEN
Film Productions Halted Due to Coronavirus Worry

- SEEN & HEARD
‘The Nightingale’ Is Reese’s Book Club Pick

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.