An energetic urban-fantasy sequel that skillfully expands the saga’s worldbuilding and cast.
Two lovers with supernatural powers meet others with similar abilities in this sequel.
British Earl Quentin d’Arcy, who’s convinced his father killed his mother six years ago, fled his home country. The 25-year-old has kept a low profile in San Diego, California, which has recently proved rewarding. He’s now dating and in love with Laurence Riley, who lives and works at a flower shop with his mother, Myriam. Laurence, the more sexually experienced of the two, is taking things slowly. Physical intensity tends to spike Quentin’s anxiety, which causes him to lose control of his telekinesis and potentially put Laurence in danger. Laurence has talents as well, including precognition, but Quentin soon realizes they aren’t the only people with superpowers. He catches the attention of Kane Wilson, who wants to know why his mind control doesn’t work on Quentin. Wilson has been “liberating” teens with special abilities and helping them learn to control them. Quentin’s association with Wilson’s group leads to his discovery of another power: creating fire. This unfortunately ties to Laurence’s cryptic vision of the future—Quentin in his arms and both men seemingly on the verge of a fiery demise. Laurence and Quentin begin to suspect Wilson isn’t so much charitably aiding youngsters as he is amassing a team of superpowered fighters. Quentin then takes a risk by accepting Wilson’s offer to join them, with the hope of staying close and uncovering what the man is truly planning. In Book 2 of this lively urban-fantasy series, Faulkner (Jack of Thorns, 2019) immediately depicts Laurence and Quentin basking in an already established romance. This sets a consistent pace from the beginning, which the author maintains by providing expository bits to catch up new readers. The couple’s relationship shows signs of evolving, as they continue to learn about each other’s families and personal histories and occasionally suffer pangs of jealousy. Though their intimate scenes of exclusively kissing may seem straight out of a YA novel, they progressively turn steamier: Quentin “pressed himself against Laurence’s body, stifling his panic against the other man’s flesh, biting down on his shoulder to keep himself from tipping over the edge.” These scenes deftly showcase two men who are savoring their romance. But Myriam, who shined brightly in the series opener, has disappointingly few appearances. Picking up the slack is Quentin’s twin, Freddy, who manages to find his brother in San Diego. Freddy is both smart and helpful as well as a standout character thanks to his affectionate nickname for Quentin: Icky (an abbreviation of his middle name, Ichabod). The supernatural element, as in the preceding book, never completely monopolizes the narrative. Nevertheless, there are plenty of new, intriguing characters in Wilson’s group, who sport varying powers, from electrokinesis to an uncanny stealth capability. Laurence and Quentin, meanwhile, hone their formidable skills, including the former’s attempt to induce a vision that reveals a past, rather than a future, event. The effective final act boasts action, characters in peril, and a denouement that, not surprisingly, teases the next volume.
An energetic urban-fantasy sequel that skillfully expands the saga’s worldbuilding and cast.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-912349-12-8
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Ravenswood Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.
Hilderbrand’s latest cautionary tale exposes the toxic—and hilarious—impact of gossip on even the most sophisticated of islands.
Eddie and Grace Pancik are known for their beautiful Nantucket home and grounds, financed with the profits from Eddie’s thriving real estate company (thriving before the crash of 2008, that is). Grace raises pedigreed hens and, with the help of hunky landscape architect Benton Coe, has achieved a lush paradise of fowl-friendly foliage. The Panciks’ teenage girls, Allegra and Hope, suffer invidious comparisons of their looks and sex appeal, although they're identical twins. The Panciks’ friends the Llewellyns (Madeline, a blocked novelist, and her airline-pilot husband, Trevor) invested $50,000, the lion’s share of Madeline’s last advance, in Eddie’s latest development. But Madeline, hard-pressed to come up with catalog copy, much less a new novel, is living in increasingly straightened circumstances, at least by Nantucket standards: she can only afford $2,000 per month on the apartment she rents in desperate hope that “a room of her own” will prime the creative pump. Construction on Eddie’s spec houses has stalled, thanks to the aforementioned crash. Grace, who has been nursing a crush on Benton for some time, gives in and a torrid affair ensues, which she ill-advisedly confides to Madeline after too many glasses of Screaming Eagle. With her agent and publisher dropping dire hints about clawing back her advance and Eddie “temporarily” unable to return the 50K, what’s a writer to do but to appropriate Grace’s adultery as fictional fodder? When Eddie is seen entering her apartment (to ask why she rented from a rival realtor), rumors spread about him and Madeline, and after the rival realtor sneaks a look at Madeline’s rough draft (which New York is hotly anticipating as “the Playboy Channel meets HGTV”), the island threatens to implode with prurient snark. No one is spared, not even Hilderbrand herself, “that other Nantucket novelist,” nor this magazine, “the notoriously cranky Kirkus.”
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-33452-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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