A brief, action-oriented medieval story whose rapid pace ultimately works against it.
Tomlin presents a second installment in a historical fiction series, following The Douglas Bastard (2022), set during the Second War of Scottish Independence.
In 1346, after the devastating defeat suffered by the Scots in the Battle of Neville’s Cross, Sir Archibald Douglas—the unrecognized son of the famous James “the Black” Douglas—returns home. His mentor and surrogate father, Sir William of Liddesdale, is a prisoner alongside the Scottish King David, and there’s little to stand between Scotland and English occupation. Sir Archibald, called “Archie” by his friends, is only a landless knight, but he starts quietly courting allies to launch guerilla attacks on the English. As they gain momentum, another foe brings both sides to their knees: a plague that would come to be known as the Black Death. When the epidemic subsides, war starts simmering again, but with a changed playing field, and Archie must choose between friends and foes within his own ranks. This novel excels in its historical details, which are clearly the result of meticulous research and beautifully evoke medieval Scotland with intimate descriptions of land, food, and clothing. The frequent battle scenes are well-paced and suitably brutal: “Blood geysered, spraying onto one of the horses. It jibbed and snorted.” The first-person narration gives the story a feeling of immediacy that’s sometimes lacking in historical fiction. But although individual scenes shine, the story as a whole struggles to take shape, and it covers about eight years at a clip with frequently abrupt time jumps. Archie is a likable protagonist—loyal and canny, battle-hardened but with deep affection for his allies and homeland. However, readers may find his growth difficult to gauge over the course of the novel. Sir Archibald was a real historical figure, and his story is remarkable enough to carry a series; yet when he must make a difficult choice about his loyalties in the final chapters, it doesn’t feel as agonizing or weighty as it should. Instead, the moment feels rushed and his journey feels truncated.
A brief, action-oriented medieval story whose rapid pace ultimately works against it.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2022
ISBN: 9798358031777
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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