Wow. Gripping. But smoke Lilith? Not likely. Next: The Damned.
Fifth in the Afro-American hip-hop Damali Richards Vampire Huntress series.
Damali’s lover, Carlos Rivera, was turned. So what’s a Vampire Huntress gonna do when her lover’s on the other team? In Bitten (2004), Carlos was led by the chairman of the Vampire Council, on the Dark Force’s sixth level of Hell, to impregnate Damali (after having bitten her) and thus to cause the Neteru (Damali), a creature born once in a millennium, to give birth to an Antichrist who will fight for the Dark Force when Armageddon bursts forth. But Carlos is lured by angels to fly into the Light and hence gets reduced to ash. Now, Damali plunges the powerful Isis blade into the heart of the ashes and Carlos bubbles up, rebuilt and confused but human once more. Damali has a miscarriage, bloodying herself, and Carlos vows revenge against the chairman. But Hell’s in turmoil. While Carlos, their master, was still ashes, many of his pack’s top vampires also turned to ash. And so the chairman has his problems. The seductress Lilith, next in power to the Devil, rises from the seventh and deepest level and tells the chairman that the Devil, fed up with him, has issued a bounty on Carlos and has freed were-cats and other demons from the upper five levels to hunt him down and return the Neteru so that a new Antichrist may be born. Carlos, no longer a master, worries that he’s human again, with no income and seemingly no superpowers. And he knows that Damali is the Neteru. About to be sterilized on a plane to the Vatican, Damali is carried off in an electric cloud to a conclave of goddesses in Philadelphia, among them the Eve whose Adam was seduced by Lilith, who then gave birth to demons. Now Lilith’s stolen Damali’s miscarried fertilized egg and will herself give birth to the Antichrist. The goddesses assign Damali one task: smoke the bitch.
Wow. Gripping. But smoke Lilith? Not likely. Next: The Damned.Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-33622-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2005
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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