Fans of sword-and-sorcery fantasy and historical fiction alike will enjoy this hard-hitting yarn.
Kung fu epic from one of the world’s bestselling authors, translated for the first time into English.
Jin Yong, the pen name of Louis Cha, was a Hong Kong–based journalist who died last year at 94. Between 1955 and 1972 he wrote 14 novels in the genre called wuxia, historical fiction with lots of martial arts brawling and “the clanging of metal.” In this book, the first of the Legends of the Condor Heroes tetralogy published in 1957, he puts all the conventions of the genre to work. A somewhat simple-minded young man named Guo Jing, raised by his mother after his father’s untimely death, grows up in a world torn apart by palace intrigues and stewing political factions behind the Great Wall. On the other side, there’s a vast Mongol army led by none other than Genghis Khan, or Temujin, who enjoys a good massacre: “His heart quickened, and a laugh bubbled up from within. The earth shook with the shouts of his men as they withdrew from the bloody field.” Fighting their way across the landscape with Guo are bands of Song dynasty patriots and traitors as well as legendary martial artists with names like The Eastern Heretic Apothecary Huang and Double Sun Wang Chongyang—oh, yes, and the Seven Freaks of the South (one is blind, one 3 feet tall, one deft at chopping up enemies with a butcher’s knife), who would prefer to be known as the Seven Heroes. Jin Yong draws on a body of legend, history, Taoist precepts, and various martial arts traditions to serve up a tale of stylized contests (“Nan threw a bone-piercing awl and Gilden Quan shot a concealed arrow from his sleeve”) and good/evil binaries that ends on a satisfyingly cliffhanging note. Though Jin Yong’s epics have been likened to Tolkien’s and George R.R. Martin’s, think Darth Vader’s message to Luke Skywalker, “I am your father,” as filtered through Jackie Chan and Chow Yun Fat.
Fans of sword-and-sorcery fantasy and historical fiction alike will enjoy this hard-hitting yarn.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-22060-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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