A fascinating concept that’s not entirely well-executed but is worth the read.
When a man returns home to care for his dying father, he’s sucked into a vast conspiracy involving his estranged childhood best friend and a paranoid (or is he?) teenager at a mental hospital.
History teacher Jack Felter wanted to leave his whole past behind in Franklin Mills, Ohio—his first love, Samantha; his one-time closest confidant, Tony; his tangled family relationships—but when his father, nicknamed “The Captain,” spirals further into dementia, Jack leaves his new life in Cleveland to help his sister, Jean, with caregiving duties. The Captain, a former pilot and Vietnam vet, is lost in a fog of wartime memories, and Jack must contend with his father's diminishing capacity without the help of Tony, who disappeared three years before. A long-ago betrayal split the best friends and Sam apart, but Jack’s feelings for Sam burn hot, and he agrees to help her find Tony; his search leads him to Tony’s job at Haven Hospital and Tony’s last patient, 16-year-old Cole Monroe. It’s here that Renner (The Man from Primrose Lane, 2012, etc.) shifts to a more audacious storyline, one that not all readers will embrace. Cole draws Jack into a mysterious world of alternate histories centered on the Great Forgetting, where, for example, the Allies lost World War II, and time is reset every so often because larger malevolent forces control our collective minds. It’s heady stuff—Jack, Cole, and the Captain eventually set off for the mythical island of Mu, where the inhabitants still “remember” world events and where Tony might be hiding—and it doesn’t always succeed.
A fascinating concept that’s not entirely well-executed but is worth the read.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-29879-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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