An inconsistent but utterly readable first installment of a projected fantasy trilogy.
In Gastreich’s (High Maga, 2014, etc.) fantasy/adventure novel, a young girl named Eolyn escapes into the enchanted South Woods as her family and village are destroyed by King’s Riders searching for subversive magic.
In a patriarchal realm where male magic users are educated and embraced and female magic users are vilified and burned alive, the kingdom of Moisehén believes that after years of systematic tyranny, it has finally vanquished the last maga from the world. But when Eolyn finds the house of an old witch hidden deep in the forest—a powerful maga known as Ghemena who is believed to be dead—she is not only taught the ways of magic, but learns that she is the last hope to bring the traditional balance between maga (female) and mage (male) magic back to Moisehén and bring peace and equality back to the people. Also crucial to the story is Eolyn’s relationship with a boy who calls himself Achim—a mysterious young man with magical ability who lives in a “forest of stone” and whom she met in the South Woods and secretly befriended. As the two mature into adults, Eolyn vows to someday leave the safety of the forest and find her friend. What she doesn’t realize is that she may be shocked by his identity. As the story progresses and Eolyn reaches adulthood, much of the narrative’s power is diminished. The dreamlike, fairy-tale ambiance is all but forgotten as the focus turns to immersive political machinations and grand-scale battles. While the latter part of the novel flags a bit due to a jarring shift in tone and a rebellion that seems rushed and contrived, the story’s strong heroine and weighty themes (namely sexism) make up for the missteps.
An inconsistent but utterly readable first installment of a projected fantasy trilogy.Pub Date: May 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9972320-0-4
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Orb Weaver Press
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
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