This immersive, colorful, and action-oriented fantasy series smoothly maintains its rapid pace.
The Chosen warriors split their forces to square off against a vampire lord in this sequel.
Adem Highlander, his friends Carl Wilder and Wil Martyr, and his lover, Jean Fairsythe, are visitors to the fantastic realm of Kismeria. They are the prophetic Sons of Odin and the Daughter of Thor, in training to face the Dark One and wielding special weapons that involve the godlike Battle Angels. After events in the previous adventure, the four Chosen—as well as the Immortal Kings and Queens—have been imprisoned by the warlord Keljar El’ Koto at Auglem Watch. The rescue party, led by Jothar Kelderath, King Tobin Fireheart, and King Orion Demonslayer, generates not just magical shields of air, but also offensive spells like fire to dispatch enemy soldiers. This breaks newly created laws, and in a shocking display of power, Jean strips them of their royalty. Though Adem disagrees with the decision, he stands by Jean. Then, an attack by Tairark Vampireking’s horde focuses the group on curing the vampirism of Hayley, Wil’s wife, which has spread to her Battle Angel, Druantia. If left unchecked, the curse may infect other female Battle Angels, bringing disaster to the warriors who summon the deities during conflicts. In this second installment of Hammer’s (Odin’s Awakening, 2014) epic fantasy series, the complexities of magical warfare and romantic loyalties continue. Taking center stage once again, however, are the action sequences. They’re akin to panoramic oil paintings of orgiastic chaos, as when “Hawks, Crows and Pixies broke away from the Shadow Men to punch through vampire chests in bright flares....Skulls exploded on impact, limbs falling as torn debris.” These scenes are balanced by explorations of the heart, considering that “love comes second to power” for Adem. Hammer also delights in creating elaborate names for characters and magical maneuvers, like “Black Owl Swoops” and Calliestra Shadowheart. The use of time-travel and other twists—like the fallout from a romantic triangle among Adem, Jean, and Princess Isabella—deftly prepares fans for a rousing sequel.
This immersive, colorful, and action-oriented fantasy series smoothly maintains its rapid pace.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Smashwords
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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