The novel fails to explore its promising premise in any depth. Shakespeare this ain’t.
A sequel to The Tempest, with Miranda cast as the heroine, Prospero as the villain, and a Moorish witch as Miranda’s love interest.
A thoughtful novelist might have taken this idea in many interesting directions. She might have tried to match the atmosphere of Shakespeare’s great romance, weaving a tale of spirits and enchantment. She might have cast a hard eye on history, examining the workings of patriarchy and colonialism in her 17th-century Italian setting. She might have probed Miranda’s psychology and that of her father. Or she might have explored a complex and sophisticated civilization through the eyes of an innocent seeing it for the first time. If Duckett intended to do any of those things, her debut novel shows little sign of it. The characters lack depth, and the writing lacks magic. As the story begins, The Tempest is over, and Miranda has returned to her native Milan with her father before setting out for Naples to marry Ferdinand. Nobody seems to like her much in Milan except a witch called Dorothea, who was born in Marrakech but for some reason is working at the ducal palace as a maidservant. Miranda may have fallen for Ferdinand, but that was only because she hadn’t yet set eyes on the likes of Dorothea. (O brave new world!) Prospero storms around making pompous pronouncements and breaking his word: It turns out he never actually ditched his powers or drowned his books, and instead of forgiving his brother, the usurper Antonio, as he promised to do, he keeps him chained in the dungeon. Oppressive mysteries threaten vaguely. Miranda dreams of heaven: “Above her, the sky was endless and blue, a shade almost purpureal, cushioning flocculent clouds in its fathomless depths.” Thankfully, such almost purpureal prose is rare; for the most part Duckett sticks to unobjectionably pedestrian language.
The novel fails to explore its promising premise in any depth. Shakespeare this ain’t.Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30632-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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